Majority Group Members Misperceive the Effect of Diversity Policies that Benefit Them

Six studies (N=2400) show that majority group members misperceive diversity policies as unbeneficial to their ingroup, even when policies benefit them. Majority group members (i.e., White Americans) perceived non-zero-sum university admission policies—policies that increase the acceptance of both minority group (i.e., Black) and majority group applicants—as harmful to their ingroup when merely framed as “diversity” policies. Even for policies lacking diversity framing (i.e., “leadership” policies), majority group members misperceived that their ingroup would not benefit when initiatives provided relatively greater benefit to minority group members, but not when they provided relatively greater benefit to members of the majority group. No consistent evidence emerged that these effects were driven by ideological factors: Majority members’ misperceptions occurred even when accounting for beliefs around diversity, groups, hierarchy, race, and politics. Instead, we find that majority group membership itself predicts misperceptions, such that both Black and White participants accurately perceive non-zero-sum policies as also benefiting the majority when participants are represented as a member of the minority group.