“Things Are Getting Better” Isn't Always Better: Considering Women's Progress Affects Perceptions of and Reactions to Contemporary Gender Inequality

The Role of Social Identity and Communities of Practice in Mergers and Acquisitions

Globally, organizations spend billions on mergers and acquisitions (M&As) each year; however, it is commonly estimated that at least half of these ventures fail. Two factors that contribute to this high failure rate are the difficulty in merging diverse areas of organizational knowledge and developing employees’ organizational identification with the post-M&A organization. In this article, we recommend the strategic use of organizational communities of practice (CoPs), groups where people share knowledge, to improve knowledge sharing within the post-M&A organization. We also argue that CoPs can indirectly increase knowledge sharing by easing M&A-triggered social identity concerns and fostering post-M&A organizational identification. We develop conceptual propositions for the relationships between CoPs participation, organizational identification, and knowledge sharing in the post-M&A organization. We also argue that the extent to which CoPs participation can increase organizational identification and knowledge sharing will depend on the post-M&A organization’s overall business strategy and whether it is primarily concerned with explicit or tacit knowledge.

The impact of course title and instructor gender on student perceptions and interest in a women's and gender studies course

Diversity awareness has enormous benefits, and universities in the United States increasingly require students to complete diversity-related courses. Prior research has demonstrated that students' initial attitudes toward these courses affect their subsequent engagement, as well as the quality of their learning experience; however, very little research has examined how these initial attitudes are formed. We conducted an experiment to examine this issue in the context of a women's and gender studies course in psychology. Participants read one of two identical course descriptions that varied only the course title (i.e., Psychology of Gender versus Psychology of Women) and instructor gender. Participants perceived a women-titled course to be narrowly focused compared to an identical gender-titled course and were more interested in taking the gender-titled course. Instructor gender had no effects on any of the variables. Additionally, female participants had more positive attitudes toward the course than male participants, regardless of title. Exploratory mediation analyses indicated that the main effects of course title and participant gender were mediated by perceptions of course content. Implications for improving student experiences and interest in diversity-related courses are discussed.

Overplaying the diversity card: When a superordinate group overrepresents the prevalence of a minority group

Despite the fact that groups and organizations often portray themselves as more diverse than they really are, the consequences of such practices for the minority who is overrepresented are not well understood. Focusing on Asian university students in Australia, we conducted three experiments to examine minority group members’ perceptions when the superordinate group (the university) overrepresents the minority group in advertising. Minority group members tended to be less favorable toward overrepresentation compared to other types of representation (Studies 1 and 2), an effect that was most pronounced for those who strongly identified with their minority group (Study 3). The negative effect of minority overrepresentation was not detected among majority group members. If anything, in Study 1, majority group members were more positive toward overrepresentation and were more willing to help the superordinate group in an overrepresentation than a no minority representation condition. Future research directions and practical implications are discussed.

Rebels without a cause: Discrimination appraised as legitimate harms group commitment

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that perceptions of the legitimacy of discrimination moderate the extent to which targets respond to pervasive discrimination with commitment to their ingroup. Both the perceived pervasiveness and legitimacy of discrimination directed toward the ingroup were manipulated among group members of a stigmatized group: People with body piercings. Generalizing previous research findings to this non-typical stigmatized group, perceiving discrimination as pervasive and legitimate affected group commitment. On a number of group commitment indicators, we found that pervasive and legitimate discrimination lowered group identification (Experiment 1), outrage about the treatment received, and liking for a victimized ingroup member, but enhanced willingness to remove body-piercings in order to pass (Experiment 2) compared to legitimate and rare discrimination. Group commitment was relatively high when discrimination was appraised as illegitimate and was not affected by pervasiveness of discrimination. These results highlight that, for this non-typical stigmatized group, pervasive discrimination that is appraised as legitimate undermines group commitment.

Ghosts of the past and dreams of the future: the impact of temporal focus on responses to contextual ingroup devaluation

The authors investigated the impact of temporal focus on group members' responses to contextual ingroup devaluation. Four experimental studies demonstrated that following an induction of negative ingroup evaluation, participants primed with a past temporal focus reported behavioral intentions more consistent with this negative appraisal than participants primed with a future temporal focus. This effect was apparent only when a negative (but not a positive) evaluation was induced, and only among highly identified group members. Importantly, the interplay between temporal focus and group identification on relevant intentions was mediated by individual self-esteem, suggesting that focus on the future may be conducive to separating negative ingroup appraisals from individual self-evaluations. Taken together, the findings suggest that high identifiers' responses to ingroup evaluations may be predicated on their temporal focus: A focus on the past may lock such individuals within their group's history, whereas a vision of the future may open up opportunities for change.

Feeling Threatened About the Future

In many Western countries, the proportion of the population that is White will drop below 50% within the next century. Two experiments examined how anticipation of these future ethnic demographics affects current intergroup processes. In Study 1, White Americans who viewed actual demographic projections for a time when Whites are no longer a numerical majority felt more angry toward and fearful of ethnic minorities than Whites who did not view future projections. Whites who viewed the future projections also felt more sympathy for their ingroup than Whites in the control condition. In Study 2, the authors replicated the effects for intergroup emotions with a sample of White Canadians. White Canadians who thought about a future in which Whites were a numerical minority appraised the ingroup as more threatened, which mediated the effect of condition on intergroup emotions. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for race relations in increasingly diverse societies.