Skip navigation
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp015425kf06p
Title: Not all diversity is created equal: The preference for socioeconomic diversity and its implications
Authors: Mait, Leon Jakob
Advisors: Sinclair, Stacey
Contributors: Psychology Department
Keywords: Diversity
Diversity rationales
Higher education
Morality
Socioeconomic status
Subjects: Social psychology
Issue Date: 2024
Publisher: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University
Abstract: In public discourse around higher education, diversity based on socioeconomic status (SES) is often presented as an alternative to diversity based on race/ethnicity. In particular, the Supreme Court’s 2023 ban on race-based affirmative action gave new energy to calls for SES-based diversity efforts. This dissertation seeks to uncover people’s perceptions of SES diversity versus racial diversity and the downstream consequences of these perceptions. In the first chapter, I examine how people differentially apply moral and instrumental diversity rationales to the two diversity types. I find that among White (but not Black) Americans, SES diversity is moralized more than racial diversity. I then document a number of perceptions about the beneficiaries of either diversity type that underly this effect. In the second chapter, I show how moralization drives support for specific diversity efforts more so than instrumentalization, particularly for strong (vs. weak) diversity efforts. As such, given the differences in moralization, White Americans report greater support for strong SES-diversity policies than strong racial-diversity policies. In the last chapter, I investigate how people respond to institutional SES- and racial-diversity efforts. I find that White Americans exhibit more positive attitudes toward SES diversity and more negative attitudes toward racial diversity. Contrary to the hypotheses, Black Americans do not differentiate between the two diversity types. The current work contributes to the abundance of research on White Americans’ cognitions about diversity, and speaks to the insights gained from studying diversity as a disaggregated construct.
URI: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp015425kf06p
Type of Material: Academic dissertations (Ph.D.)
Language: en
Appears in Collections:Psychology

Files in This Item:
File Description SizeFormat 
Mait_princeton_0181D_14941.pdf2.52 MBAdobe PDFView/Download


Items in Dataspace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.