What We Believe Makes a Difference

Diversity is not just about having different perspectives and opinions on a topic. Including diverse individuals within a group leads people to believe that there could be divergence in views, which changes their behavior. Group members of the same category assume that they would concur with each other, appreciate each other's views and opinions, and resolve any conflict quickly.

However, later, when group members perceive social differences, they change these projections. They expect differences and points. They think an agreement will be reached, but it will take time and effort. This is also why social diversity has upsides and downsides: people put in more effort in different well and social cognitive environments. They appreciate the benefits of hard work, even though it is unpleasant.

A 2006 study by Samuel Sommers, a social psychologist at Tufts University, showed that racially heterogeneous groups exchanged more information during the deliberation of a sexual assault case compared to all-White groups. Sommers undertook mock juror trials with actual panelists in courtrooms in Michigan, with judges and jury administrators as collaborators. The subjects realised that the mock jury was an experiment being conducted within the confines of a court but needed to comprehend that the central objective of the study was to explore racial diversity within the jury.

For instance, for a six-person jury, Sam chose all white jurors or four white & two black jurors. As one would expect, the diverse juries were better at fact-finding thanks to considering different angles, made fewer recall errors and were more willing to discuss the subject of race in the case.

These improvements did not occur because black jurors added to the volume of information within the group; they took place because white jurors changed their behavior in the presence of black jurors. They were more hard-working and less preconceived in the presence of diversity.

Let's look at the example: You are a researcher working on a portion of a paper for an oral presentation at a conference. However, since the two of you have Chinese and American colleagues, you know there will be some differences and some problems. Moreover, you may consider that other aspects are distinguishing you from that person unrelated to age or perhaps even related to social class, for instance, their background or personal history – such aspects that another Chinese colleague cannot offer. How are you going to go about the preparation for this meeting? You will almost certainly make a greater effort than otherwise to articulate your logic and consider everything possible rather than only the positively skewed perspectives—or you may put even more effort into resolving these gaps.

This is what diversity does: it is hard work, encouraging people to be creative and contemplate options before taking any action that involves another person. The discomfort from differences in people is akin to the struggle with physical exercise. To have more muscle, you have to push more weight up. As they say, "No pain, no gain." The expected changes will not happen without the pain of diversity, specifically, the need for it in any group, organisations, and society.

This essay was first published in Scientific American in 2014. Katherine Phillips revised and updated it in 2017 to include new research.