Motivating support for workplace diversity policies: A mindsets framework

Abstract

Diversity policies designed to foster more equitable work environments are widespread, but not necessarily widely supported. In this review, we advance a fixed-growth mindsets approach to understand people's support for, or resistance to, diversity policies in the workplace. We theorize that people's mindsets, or their fundamental beliefs about the malleability of attributes, underlie their diversity support via multiple mechanisms: (1) effort, (2) bias, (3) attributions, and (4) worldview threat. We expand upon each theorized mechanism, draw on established evidence to substantiate our arguments, and offer exciting new questions to guide future research. Because mindsets are amenable to change, we argue that our motivational framework to understanding diversity support offers a novel path forward for both scholarship and organizations that want to generate a greater consensus of support for their diversity policies.