You Can’t Fix What You Don’t See: Diversity Blind Spots Reduce Dominant Group Members’ Support for Diversity Initiatives

Many organizational diversity initiatives are focused on increasing the number of women and racial minorities in a given organization. However, while gender and racial gaps in organizational representation persist, opposition to diversity initiatives is still widespread, in particular among Whites. We posit that part of Whites’ opposition to diversity initiatives is driven by an inflated perception of organizational diversity, caused by diversity blind spots (i.e., overlooking the absence of subordinated group members). Indeed, across three experiments (N = 1,276), we find that Whites rate an organization as less diverse when the absence of subordinated group members is made salient compared to when it is not made salient—even though the objective demographic composition of the organization is identical across conditions. These findings suggest that dominant group members oppose diversity initiatives, in part, because they fail to spontaneously notice the absence of subordinated groups. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.