Ein interessanter Artikel über die Wirkung von Diversity Training:
In terms of reducing bias and promoting equal opportunity, diversity training has “failed spectacularly,” according to the expert assessment of sociologists Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev. When Dobbin and Kalev evaluated the impact of diversity training at more than 800 companies over three decades, they found that the positive effects are short-lived and that compulsory training generates resistance and resentment.
“A company is better off doing nothing than mandatory diversity training,” Kalev concluded.
Some of the most popular training approaches are of dubious value. There is evidence, for example, that introducing people to the most commonly used readings about white privilege can reduce sympathy for poor whites, especially among social liberals.
There is also evidence that emphasizing cultural differences across racial groups can lead to an increased belief in fundamental biological differences among races. This means that well-intentioned efforts to celebrate diversity may in fact reinforce racial stereotyping.
With its emphasis on do’s and don’t’s, diversity training tends to be little more than a form of etiquette. It spells out rules that are just as rigid as those that govern the placement of salad forks and soup spoons. The fear of saying “the wrong thing” often leads to unproductive, highly scripted conversations.
This is the exact opposite of the kinds of debates and discussions that you would hope to find on a college campus.
The main beneficiaries of the forthcoming explosion in diversity programming will be the swelling ranks of “diversity and inclusion” consultants who stand to make a pretty penny. A one-day training session for around 50 people costs anywhere between US$2,000 and $6,000. Robin DiAngelo, the best-selling author of “White Fragility,” charges up to $15,000 per event.
Wer hätte es gedacht? Wenn man eine Gruppe als die Schuldigen benennt, dann reagieren die darauf eher mit Ablehnung und die Leute geben eben teilweise nur vor, dass sie etwas glauben, um keine Nachteile zu erleiden, was höchst unproduktiv ist.
In dem Artikel wird auf diesen Bericht verwiesen:
A number of recent studies of antibias training used the implicit association test (IAT) before and after to assess whether unconscious bias can be affected by training. A meta-analysis of 426 studies found weak immediate effects on unconscious bias and weaker effects on explicit bias. A side-byside test of 17 interventions to reduce white bias toward blacks found that eight reduced unconscious bias, but in a follow-up examining eight implicit bias interventions and one sham, all nine worked, suggesting that subjects may have learned how to game the bias test.4 Effects dissipated within a few days. Most of these studies look at interventions that mirror corporate and university training in intensity and duration. One important study by Patricia Devine and colleagues suggests that a more extensive curriculum, based in strategies proven effective in the lab, can reduce measured bias.5 That 12-week intervention, which took the form of a college course and included a control group, worked best for people who were concerned about discrimination and who did the exercises — best when preaching to the converted. We do not see employers jumping on this costly bandwagon. Consider Starbucks, which closed 8,000 stores for half a day to train 175,000 workers, at an estimated cost of $12 million in lost business alone. Starbucks hires 100,000 new workers each year, and to match the Devine intervention they would need a dozen halfday sessions, every year, for more than half the workforce. Unlikely they would go that far, even if the logistics of scaling a classroom intervention to 100,000 people could be worked out. Despite the poor showing of antibias training in academic studies, it remains the go-to solution for corporate executives and university administrators facing public relations crises, campus intolerance and slow progress on diversifying the executive and faculty ranks.
Auch eine interessante Darstellung: Läden wie Starbucks haben soviel wechselndes Perfsonal, dass sie das Training weiter öfter anwenden müssten, um sie überhaupt alle teilnehmen zu lassen. Aber obwohl dies die Trainings noch uneffektiver macht als sie ohnehin schon sind halten sie daran fest. Ich hatte schon mal darauf verwiesen, dass es eben ein gutes Mittel ist um nachzuweisen, dass man etwas gegen Rassismus tut, der Erfolg ist vermutlich Nebensache.
Why is diversity training not more effective? If we can answer that question, perhaps we can fix it. Five different lines of research suggest why it may fail.
Fünf Gründe, das klingt schon mal interesant
First, short-term educational interventions in general do not change people. This should come as no surprise to anthropologists. Decades of research on workplace training of all sorts suggests that by itself, training does not do much. Take workplace safety and health training which, it stands to reason, employees have an interest in paying attention to. Alone, it does little to change attitudes or behavior. If you cannot train workers to attach the straps on their hard hats, it may be wellnigh impossible to get them to give up biases that they have acquired over a lifetime of media exposure and real-world experience.
Der Gedanke, dass man Leute einfach so „umerziehen“ kann ist aus meiner Sicht eh ehr naiv. Um so mehr, wenn sie auch noch etwas mitmachen müssen ohne das sie das von sich aus wollen oder meinen, dass ihre Ansichten falsch sind.
Second, some have argued that antibias training activates stereotypes. Field and laboratory studies find that asking people to suppress stereotypes tends to reinforce them — making them more cognitively accessible to people. Try not thinking about elephants. Diversity training typically encourages people to recognize and fight the stereotypes they hold, and this may simply be counterproductive.
Dass das Training die Vorurteile eher verstärkt kann ich mir als Psychologischen Effekt sehr gut vorstellen. Gerade weil die Begründungen eben auch nicht überzeugen und es sehr einseitige Schuldvorwürfe sind. Wer etwas mit „white Guilt“ konfrontiert wird, der wird weit eher denken „ich bin doch ein guter Mensch, warum greifen die mich hier an?“
Third, recent research suggests that training inspires unrealistic confidence in antidiscrimination programs, making employees complacent about their own biases. In the lab, Castilla and Benard found that when experimenters described subjects’ employers as nondiscriminatory, subjects did not censor their own gender biases.7 Employees who go through diversity training may not, subsequently, take responsibility for avoiding discrimination. Kaiser and colleagues found that when subjects are told that their employers have prodiversity measures such as training, they presume that the workplace is free of bias and react harshly to claims of discrimination.8 More generally, in experiments, the presence of workplace diversity programs seems to blind employees to hard evidence of discrimination.
Die Ansicht, dass der Arbeitnehmer eh Maßnahmen ergriffen hat um zB Geschlechtergerechtigkeit einzuführen, lässt einen weniger Rücksicht auf das Geschlecht nehmen, weil man meint, dass der Arbeitgeber ja eh die passende Rücksicht walten lässt. Vielleicht so ein „wenn die Frauen eh gefördert werden und alle Stellen bekommen, dann brauche ich mich auch nicht zurückhalten und kann sie entsprechend kritisieren bzw dann sollen sie sich mal nicht so anstellen.
Fourth, others find that training leaves whites feeling left out. Plaut and colleagues found the message of multiculturalism, which is common in training, makes whites feel excluded and reduces their support for diversity, relative to the message of colorblindness, which is rare these days. Whites generally feel they will not be treated fairly in workplaces with prodiversity messages.10 Perhaps this is why trainers frequently report hostility and resistance, and trainees often leave “confused, angry, or with more animosity toward” other groups.11 The trouble is, when African-Americans work with whites who take a color-blind stance (rather than a multicultural stance), it alienates them, reducing their psychological engagement at work and quite possibly reducing their likelihood of staying on.12 So perhaps trainers cannot win with a message of either multiculturalism or color-blindness.
Wenig überraschend führen Bevorzugungen der „Benachteiligten Gruppen“ zu einem Widerstand und Anpragerungen der „Tätergruppe“ ebenso. Das dürfte um so mehr dadurch gefördert werden, dass in dem intersektionalen Ansätzen eben kein vermittelnder Weg mehr vorhanden ist, sondern ein ganz klares Täter-Opfer, Privilegierter und Unterdrückter Schema vorhanden ist. Es erzeugt automatisch einen Graben.
Fifth, we know from a large body of organizational research that people react negatively to efforts to control them. Jobautonomy research finds that people resist external controls on their thoughts and behavior and perform poorly in their jobs when they lack autonomy. Self-determination research shows that when organizations frame motivation for pursuing a goal as originating internally, commitment rises, but when they frame motivation as originating externally, rebellion increases. Legault, Gutsell and Inzlicht found this to be true in the case of antibias training. Kidder and colleagues showed that when diversity programs are introduced with an external rationale — avoiding lawsuit — participants were more resistant than when they were introduced with an organizational rationale — management needs. In experiments, whites resented external pressure to control prejudice against blacks, and
Überraschung, wenn man Leuten eine Weltsicht vorschreiben will, dann reagieren sie nicht positv
Alles Evolution 