 Going it alone: Competition increases the attractiveness of minority statusErika L. Kirgios, Edward H. Chang and Katherine Milkman Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2020, vol. 161, issue C, 20-33 Abstract: Past research demonstrates that people prefer to affiliate with others who resemble them demographically. However, we posit that when competing for scarce opportunities, strategic considerations moderate the strength of this tendency toward homophily. Across six experiments, we find that anticipated competition weakens people’s desire to join groups that include similar others. When expecting to compete against fellow group members, women are more willing to join all-male groups and Black participants are more willing to join all-White groups than in the absence of competition. We show that this effect is mediated by the belief that being distinct will lead your performance to stand out. Our findings offer a new perspective to enrich past research on homophily, shedding light on the instances when minorities are more likely to join groups in which they will be underrepresented. Keywords: Diversity; Gender; Race; Group selection; Competition; Homophily (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:161:y:2020:i:c:p:20-33 DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2020.03.009 Access Statistics for this article Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes is currently edited by John M. Schaubroeck More articles in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes from Elsevier |
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