Browsing by Author "Lindsey, Alex P."

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Investigating why and for whom management ethnic representativeness influences interpersonal mistreatment in the workplace
    (APA, 2017) Lindsey, Alex P.; Avery, Derek R.; Dawson, Jeremy F.; King, Eden B.; Psychology, School of Science
    Preliminary research suggests that employees use the demographic makeup of their organization to make sense of diversity-related incidents at work. The authors build on this work by examining the impact of management ethnic representativeness—the degree to which the ethnic composition of managers in an organization mirrors or is misaligned with the ethnic composition of employees in that organization. To do so, they integrate signaling theory and a sense-making perspective into a relational demography framework to investigate why and for whom management ethnic representativeness may have an impact on interpersonal mistreatment at work. Specifically, in three complementary studies, the authors examine the relationship between management ethnic representativeness and interpersonal mistreatment. First, they analyze the relationship between management ethnic representativeness and perceptions of harassment, bullying, and abuse the next year, as moderated by individuals’ ethnic similarity to others in their organizations in a sample of 60,602 employees of Britain’s National Health Service. Second, a constructive replication investigates perceived behavioral integrity as an explanatory mechanism that can account for the effects of representativeness using data from a nationally representative survey of working adults in the United States. Third and finally, online survey data collected at two time points replicated these patterns and further integrated the effects of representativeness and dissimilarity when they are measured using both objective and subjective strategies. Results support the authors’ proposed moderated mediation model in which management ethnic representation is negatively related to interpersonal mistreatment through the mediator of perceived behavioral integrity, with effects being stronger for ethnically dissimilar employees.
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    Men Don't Care While Women Find it Unfair: Exploring the Harmful Consequences of Illegal Interview Questions on Women's Reactions
    (2020-02) Beecham, Jasmine; Pietri, Evava S.; Ashburn-Nardo, Leslie; Lindsey, Alex P.; Stockdale, Margaret S.
    Although interviews are a widely used and popular selection technique, when they lack clear structure and a predetermined set of questions, bias can permeate the interview selection process. In particular, illegal interview questions (i.e., questions that cannot legally be asked, such as marital status or children) may be particularly threatening for female applicants. Justice and social identity theory were used to explain the applicant reactions to illegal interview questions in this study. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four hypothetical interview conditions – a control of four low face-valid interview questions, four non-gender relevant illegal interview questions, or four gender-relevant illegal interview questions. There was a significant gender by condition interaction on all outcome measures. Illegal interview questions had a significant negative effect on women’s organizational reactions (job pursuit intentions, organizational attractiveness, belonging, trust & comfort) but not on men’s organizational reactions. In contrast both women and men had significantly lower procedural justice perceptions of the gender-relevant illegal interview condition compared to the two other conditions. However, women perceived the illegal interview questions (both the gender relevant and gender non-relevant questions) as lower in face validity (i.e., were less relevant to the job), whereas men perceived all the interview questions as equally face-valid. Thus, although men believed the illegal interview questions were low in procedural justice and unfair, men still perceived these questions as valid and job-relevant. Overall, an indirect effect of procedural justice perceptions on organizational reactions was significant for both men and women, indicating that lower procedural justice did have a significant negative effect on applicants’ organizational reactions. Taken together, the following study demonstrates that illegal interview questions (both those related to gender and unrelated to gender) act as a social identity threat for women and harm women’s attraction to the organization, whereas men are primarily unaffected by these illegal interview questions in their reactions.
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    Reaching resistant trainees: creating effective diversity training through integrating perspective taking and media
    (2018) Amber, Brittney; Lindsey, Alex P.
    Diversity training continues to be an important research domain because of its practical application in modern organizations. However, research regarding best methods remains inconclusive, and little work has investigated non-demographic trainee characteristics as boundary conditions of diversity training effectiveness. The goal of this study is to test the efficacy of integrating two diversity training methods, perspective taking and media contact, specifically for resistant trainees who are high in social dominance orientation (SDO). In a sample of 373 participants, I test a proposed three-way interaction between these variables such that the effect of perspective taking on racial bias and intergroup anxiety will be enhanced by a media contact video condition, and this integration of training methods will be particularly beneficial for high SDO individuals. This hypothesis was largely unsupported, as integrating perspective taking and media interventions did not lead to lower racial bias or intergroup anxiety. Counter to expectations, the media contact video revealed a harmful effect on racial bias for those low in SDO. However, when combined with a perspective taking writing task, this harmful effect was mitigated. Supplemental analyses reveal that in the media contact video condition, the effect of SDO on racial bias was explained by a mediating mechanism, parasocial connection. Trainees high in SDO formed more negative parasocial connections with the speaker in the media contact video condition. However, those low in SDO formed strong positive parasocial connections with the speaker, and in turn, this positive parasocial connection led to lower racial bias. Implications, future research, and limitations are discussed.
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    Subtle Discrimination in the Workplace: A Vicious Cycle
    (Cambridge, 2017-03) Jones, Kristen P.; Arena, Dave F.; Nittrouer, Christine L.; Alonso, Natalya M.; Lindsey, Alex P.; Psychology, School of Science
    Due to rising pressure to appear egalitarian, subtle discrimination pervades today's workplace. Although its ambiguous nature may make it seem innocuous on the surface, an abundance of empirical evidence suggests subtle discrimination undermines employee and organizational functioning, perhaps even more so than its overt counterpart. In the following article, we argue for a multidimensional and continuous, rather than categorical, framework for discrimination. In doing so, we propose that there exist several related but distinct continuums on which instances of discrimination vary, including subtlety, formality, and intentionality. Next, we argue for organizational scholarship to migrate toward a more developmental, dynamic perspective of subtle discrimination in order to build a more comprehensive understanding of its antecedents, underlying mechanisms, and outcomes. We further contend that everyone plays a part in the process of subtle discrimination at work and, as a result, bears some responsibility in addressing and remediating it. We conclude with a brief overview of research on subtle discrimination in the workplace from each of four stakeholder perspectives—targets, perpetrators, bystanders, and allies—and review promising strategies that can be implemented by each of these stakeholders to remediate subtle discrimination in the workplace.