Title:

From high compensation to perceived representation: Exposure to highly paid women and unrepresented minorities leads people to overestimate gender and racial diversity

Abstract:

Eight studies (N = 2,004, including five pre-registered) document how exposure to highly paid women and minorities affects people’s perception of their representation. Even when their group’s actual representation is held constant, we find that a few highly paid women or non-White employees inflate people’s perceptions of gender and racial diversity. This effect of women and non-White employees who defy the “wealthy White male” stereotype is not moderated by observers’ own gender or race: Regardless of their own gender or racial identity, we find that people perceive higher diversity when exposed to a few highly paid women or minorities. Finally, we examine the consequences of such inflated perceptions of representation. We find that exposure to counter-stereotypical exemplars of compensation inhibits support for initiatives that reduce gender and racial disparities and weakens people’s willingness to hire qualified job candidates who contribute to diversity. We conclude with a discussion of the tension between perceptions of equity and perceptions of diversity and the consequences of substituting the former for the latter.