Style Only: 42 Scientific American, October 2014
Style Only: 42 Scientific American, October 2014
HOW
Calello Professor of Leadership
and Ethics and senior vice dean
at Columbia Business School.
DIVERSITY
WORKS
Being around people
who are different from
us makes us more
THE FIRST THING to acknowledge about
creative, more diligent
diversity is that it can be difficult. In the U.S., and harder-working
where the dialogue of inclusion is relatively
advanced, even the mention of the word “diver-
sity” can lead to anxiety and conflict. Supreme
Katherine W. Phillips
Court justices disagree on the virtues of diver-
sity and the means for achieving it. Corpora-
tions spend billions of dollars to attract and
manage diversity both internally and external-
ly, yet they still face discrimination lawsuits,
and the leadership ranks of the business world remain predominantly white and male.
It is reasonable to ask what good diversity does us. Diversity of expertise confers bene-
fits that are obvious—you would not think of building a new car without engineers, de-
signers and quality-control experts—but what about social diversity? What good comes
from diversity of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation? Research has shown that
social diversity in a group can cause discomfort, rougher interactions, a lack of trust, great-
er perceived interpersonal conflict, lower communication, less cohesion, more concern
IN BRIEF
Decades of research by organizational scientists, psy- It seems obvious that a group of people with diverse This is not only because people with different back-
chologists, sociologists, economists and demographers individual expertise would be better than a homoge- grounds bring new information. Simply interacting with
show that socially diverse groups (that is, those with a neous group at solving complex, nonroutine problems. individuals who are different forces group members to
diversity of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orienta- It is less obvious that social diversity should work in the prepare better, to anticipate alternative viewpoints and
tion) are more innovative than homogeneous groups. same way—yet the science shows that it does. to expect that reaching consensus will take effort.
to a member of the opposing political party, and half were told THE POWER OF ANTICIPATION
to make their case to a member of their own party. DIVERSITY IS NOT ONLY about bringing different perspectives to
The result: Democrats who were told that a fellow Democrat the table. Simply adding social diversity to a group makes peo-
disagreed with them prepared less well for the discussion than ple believe that differences of perspective might exist among
Democrats who were told that a Republican disagreed with them. them and that belief makes people change their behavior.
Republicans showed the same pattern. When disagreement Members of a homogeneous group rest somewhat assured
comes from a socially different person, we are prompted to work that they will agree with one another; that they will understand
harder. Diversity jolts us into cognitive action in ways that homo- one another’s perspectives and beliefs; that they will be able to
geneity simply does not. easily come to a consensus. But when members of a group notice
For this reason, diversity appears to lead to higher-quality sci- that they are socially different from one another, they change
entific research. This year Richard Freeman, an economics profes- their expectations. They anticipate differences of opinion and
sor at Harvard University and director of the Science and Engi- perspective. They assume they will need to work harder to come
neering Workforce Project at the National Bureau of Economic to a consensus. This logic helps to explain both the upside and
Research, along with Wei Huang, a Harvard economics Ph.D. can- the downside of social diversity: people work harder in diverse
didate, examined the ethnic identity of the authors of 1.5 million environments both cognitively and socially. They might not like
scientific papers written between 1985 and 2008 using Thomson it, but the hard work can lead to better outcomes.
Reuters’s Web of Science, a comprehensive database of published In a 2006 study of jury decision making, social psychologist
research. They found that papers written by diverse groups receive Samuel Sommers of Tufts University found that racially diverse
more citations and have higher impact factors than papers writ- groups exchanged a wider range of information during deliber-
ten by people from the same ethnic group. Moreover, they found ation about a sexual assault case than all-white groups did. In
that stronger papers were associated with a greater number of collaboration with judges and jury administrators in a Michi-
author addresses; geographical diversity, and a larger number of gan courtroom, Sommers conducted mock jury trials with a
references, is a reflection of more intellectual diversity. group of real selected jurors. Although the participants knew
projects need not be restricted to the affluent, (zooniverse.org) give millions of people access
SCIENCE EXPOSED literate and educated public. In his work with
the ethnic Baka groups in Cameroon, Jerome
to all manner of collaborations. At CERN near
Geneva and other large-scale scientific pro-
By Steven Bishop
Lewis of University College London uses sim- jects, people with a range of skills have come
ple images to document valuable trees. together to work toward specified goals;
Methods of citizen science are being opened through citizen science, this idea can be broad-
Opening science to public participation, the up to projects in social science to study dis- ened, be it by classifying newly discovered gal-
“citizen science” mode of research, has stimu- crimination and human-rights abuses and axies or identifying plants. This adds a novel
lated a diversity of projects that have led to to support local peoples in better represent- dimension to citizen science, letting the crowd
real innovation and changes in behavior. It ing themselves to outsiders. propose new solutions to unsolved problems.
has done more than simply enhance existing Besides data gathering, many citizen In Iceland, after the 2008 financial crash,
research. It has also engaged a range of view- science projects change our perceptions. city councilors had hard choices to make
points that otherwise would have remained The Annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count about how to spend their limited budgets.
below the radar, allowing new people to pro- (birds.audubon.org/christmas-bird-count) Better Reykjavik was set up to enable citi-
vide new ideas to solve new problems. gives information about population trends. It zens to debate innovative ideas to improve
Citizen science is driven mainly by the engages with society and in doing so pro- their communities. They crowdsourced
Internet, cloud computing, smartphones and vides education that can help lead to cultural potential projects, prioritized them and
social media, which enable thousands of sci- change. The project was started to replace the decided what budgets to allocate. Such
entists—or nonqualified individuals who are tradition of shooting birds on Christmas day. successes have opened our eyes to new
often globally dispersed—to participate in the Ideas can also be readily scaled up. A pro- ways of funding science, such as the Experi-
gathering of information and knowledge on a ject started in a classroom can soon become ment crowdfunding platform (experiment.
range of scales: Galaxy Zoo (galaxyzoo.org) a global initiative. Projects such as Leafsnap com). How long will it be before such
classifies galaxies, Qcumber (q-cumber.org) (leafsnap.com), which identifies approaches become de rigueur in
allows international users to upload sites of plants, feed information back to indi- scientific funding?
environmental hazards, Project FeederWatch viduals, who become part of a two- When coupled with big data, citi-
(feederwatch.org) counts birds in North way process. This collective knowl- zen science projects will expand yet
America, and the California Roadkill Observa- edge may spark other ideas, leading further. Open platforms will give indi-
tion System (wildlifecrossing.net/California) to new ways of doing science, as Steven Bishop viduals access to data, models and
reports animals killed by vehicles. These pro- seen, for instance, in solutions to the is a professor analyses, so they can pose their own
grams enable data sampling on a scale finer protein-folding puzzles put forward of mathematics questions and find solutions. This will
than could be achieved by any other means. by the Foldit project (fold.it/portal). at University change the way we teach science in
Ubiquitous mobile devices means that Platforms such as Zooniverse College London. schools and perform research.
Creating safer communities. Ensuring access When individuals from underrepresented how you approach a problem,” says her profile
to clean water. Tackling such problems re- groups become scientists, they often come for the Society for Advancement of Hispanics/
quires science. Yet for much of its history, sci- with a mission. Carl Hart, an associate pro- Chicanos and Native Americans in Science.
ence has been shaped by European values. fessor of psychology and psychiatry at Co- “Using traditional Native American knowl-
White European and American men have lumbia University, grew up in inner-city Mi- edge is not just important from a scientific
largely controlled who asks the questions, ami during the 1980s war on drugs. After point of view but also from a cultural point of
how they are studied and what is significant. witnessing friends and neighbors suffer from view.... We need people who approach prob-
Many important discoveries and innovations drug-related crime and a short stint selling lems from this perspective in the sciences so
have been made, but many questions have and trying drugs, he remapped his trajectory. that we can learn—and hopefully teach oth-
been overlooked or unacknowledged because He graduated from college and went on to ers—how to be better stewards of the land.”
the experiences of investigators were limited. study physiological effects of drugs on the Ecologists have recently begun to pay at-
Pursuing personally relevant research human brain because he wanted to under- tention to urban environmental issues. But
broadens science and makes it more meaning- stand how drugs affected people. “You just these issues were not new to people of color
ful for us all. Robin Nelson, an assistant profes- have these different perspectives that are not and those living in low-income communities,
sor of anthropology at Skidmore College, ac- from our typical pool of scientists, and so you who saw through the lens of environmental
knowledges that opinions on research design look at problems differently,” he told the justice. As a native Chicagoan, Kellen A. Mar-
in biological anthropology are shifting because Huffington Post in 2013. “You are certainly shall-Gillespie, a doctoral student in urban
more people recognize the role of personal more courageous in some areas because you ecology at the University of Illinois at Chica-
experience in shaping science. She recalls the see the impact on people you care about.” go, noticed how pollution from cars and busi-
moment in her work on caretaking strategies Margaret Hiza Redsteer, a research scien- nesses affected the respiratory health of her
in Caribbean families when she decided to tist at the U.S. Geological Survey, studies cli- neighbors. She hypothesized that these pol-
heed advice from her female subjects and ex- mate change impacts on the Navajo Nation’s lutants would negatively affect the growth
pand a study to include male family members land and water. While raising her family on and physiological development of plants, in-
who also contribute to familial well-being. the reservation, she grew frustrated about cluding vegetables in nearby gardens. “Envi-
“To fully comprehend female care- water supplies that were intermittent and ronmental inequities and racism [have] tre-
giving dynamics, I had to understand how sometimes contaminated. When she be- mendous implications for the sustainability of
these women construct their universe,” gan her college studies at 28, she was in- natural systems and ecosystem services,” she
Nelson says. “They live in a patriar- terested in geology and hydrology be- wrote for the Ecological Society of America.
chal social system. That meant in- D. N. Lee is a cause she wanted to better understand “I felt a deep charge to connect the social
terviewing male family members biologist who studies the relations among the land, how it benefits of studying ecosystem services, [en-
such as brothers and fathers, too.” animal behavior and was used and the water her communi- vironmental justice], and segregation.”
She discovered that female caretak- ecology. She writes ty needed. “One of the most important When science is inclusive, everyone wins.
ing strategies were often, in part, a The Urban Scientist things I learned over the course of my Long underserved communities are finally
response to financial and emotional blog for SA’s education is that who you are helps de- heard, and scientists who listen are rewarded
provisions of male family members. blog network. fine how you look at the world and with fresh insights.
the mock jury was a court-sponsored experiment, they did not anticipating some disagreement and potential difficulty commu-
know that the true purpose of the research was to study the nicating because your collaborator is American and you are Chi-
impact of racial diversity on jury decision making. nese. Because of one social distinction, you may focus on other
Sommers composed the six-person juries with either all differences between yourself and that person, such as her or his
white jurors or four white and two black jurors. As you might culture, upbringing and experiences—differences that you would
expect, the diverse juries were better at considering case facts, not expect from another Chinese collaborator. How do you pre-
made fewer errors recalling relevant information and displayed pare for the meeting? In all likelihood, you will work harder on
a greater openness to discussing the role of race in the case. explaining your rationale and anticipating alternatives than you
These improvements did not necessarily happen because the would have otherwise.
black jurors brought new information to the group—they hap- This is how diversity works: by promoting hard work and
pened because white jurors changed their behavior in the pres- creativity; by encouraging the consideration of alternatives
ence of the black jurors. In the presence of diversity, they were even before any interpersonal interaction takes place. The pain
more diligent and open-minded. associated with diversity can be thought of as the pain of exer-
cise. You have to push yourself to grow your muscles. The pain,
GROUP EXERCISE as the old saw goes, produces the gain. In just the same way, we
CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING SCENARIO: You are writing up a section of need diversity—in teams, organizations and society as a whole—
a paper for presentation at an upcoming conference. You are if we are to change, grow and innovate.