An examination of diversity rationales: How instrumental and moral diversity rationales create minority spotlight

Past research has demonstrated that organizations rationalize their commitment to diversity for instrumental or moral reasons that are differentially preferred by marginalized and privileged groups. Across four studies, the present research contends that privileged group members view instrumental diversity contexts as affording them educational opportunities and view moral diversity contexts as expecting them to afford (meta-affordances) marginalized group members inclusion, both resulting in a minority spotlight. Moreover, marginalized group members view these diversity rationales through an inverse lens with moral diversity contexts affording them inclusion and instrumental diversity contexts resulting in education meta-affordances and anticipated minority spotlight. The present findings advance research on implications of diversity rationales, particularly their effect on the attention privileged groups pay to marginalized groups, and marginalized groups’ (accurate) anticipation of this attention.