Speaking of Psychology - Why diversity matters, with Robert Sellers, PhD

Episode Date: January 10, 2024

The words diversity, equity and inclusion have become political flashpoints -- but the science and evidence on why diversity matters is often ignored. Robert Sellers, PhD, of the University of Michigan, talks about why diverse groups lead to better outcomes and how psychologists’ research has informed our understanding of diversity in our schools, workplaces and other institutions. For transcripts, links and more information, please visit the Speaking of Psychology Homepage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In recent years, the words diversity, equity, and inclusion have become political flashpoints. In 2023, legislators in 22 states introduced bills to restrict DEI efforts, including prohibiting state colleges from having DEI offices or staff, and banning mandatory diversity training. Seven of those bills have become law. Against this contentious backdrop, the science and evidence on why diversity matters are often ignored. Today, we're going to talk about that research and the role that psychologists play in DEI work. So what does diversity, equity, and inclusion mean?

How has our understanding of racial and ethnic identity changed over the years? And how has the research informed diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts? What does the research say about why we should all care about diversity in our schools, workplaces, and other institutions? And what can psychological science add to discussions about diversity? University. Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills. My guest today is Dr. Robert Sellers, the Charles D. Moody collegiate professor of psychology

and education at the University of Michigan. He has been a professor at Michigan since 1997. From 2016 to 2021, he also served as the university's vice provost for equity and inclusion and chief diversity officer. Dr. Sellar's research has focused on ethnic and racial identity and the role of race in the psychological lives of African Americans. He has studied the significance and meaning that African Americans place on race in defining themselves, the ways in which parents transmit messages about race to their children, and the ways in which black people cope with racial discrimination. Dr. Sellers has won numerous awards for his work, including the 2022 American Psychological Foundation Gold Medal Award for Impact in Psychology

and the 2023 Association for Psychological Sciences, James L. Jackson, Lifetime Achievement Award for Transformative Scholarship. Dr. Sellers, thank you for joining me. It's a pleasure, Kim. I'm looking forward to our conversation. Now, you gave a presentation at APA's convention in the summer of 2023 called Why Psychologists should care about racial and ethnic diversity. Since many of the listeners to this podcast are not psychologists and didn't attend the convention, let's start with the really big question. Why should all of us care about diversity? Why is it important that we prioritize diversity

in our schools, workplaces, and other institutions? Well, oftentimes diversity is thought of in terms of how do we include individuals and groups that have historically not been included in whether it's our sciences, in the workplace, in education, whatever environment. The notion of diversity, equity, and inclusion has always sort of focused on writing the wrong, addressing the needs of those who traditionally not been included. And while that is absolutely important and I strongly support those efforts and think those, that motivation is important, is also an even larger argument and a larger issue that's at play. That by excluding those experiences of those groups and both through the science, our theories, our applications, we're not only damaging their life chances, but we're also diminishing the science itself and damaging the

applicability of treatments as well as drugs and other things that we look forward to enhance society's challenges with regards to mental health and other psychological outcomes. The fact of the matter is that we as individuals bring to the table different experiences, different understandings, and that those different understandings are key to the growth of our ability to actually solve big and important problems. And so if we are limited in terms of those experiences and limited in terms of those insights, then our efforts to solve those big problems are in and of themselves limited. So we will not have everything at the table.

And that's one of the things that we know in psychology is that diversity of perspective is really key to developing innovative ideas, to create a more effective ideas, and ultimately to solving big problems. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are often spoken of as a unit. The three words are grouped together, but I'd like to break them down. Can you talk about what each word means and why it's important to work toward all three? So the best way for me to do that is to note that, so when I think of diversity, I'm thinking of trying to capture the totality of the experience.

of whether you're talking about a student body, in the case of higher education or education in general, or a team in terms of in corporate America, the team working on the problem, the solution, we're talking about the totality of the human experience being captured. Too often, because of long-term historical, societal, injustices and inequities, certain experiences are privileged and other experiences are not, so much to the point that we sometimes think that there's a normative American experience

or a normative human experience as opposed to recognize that there's a great deal of diversity in those experiences. And so the first thing is trying to capture a more heterogeneous group of people, group of experiences, and bringing them into play in terms of everything that we're doing, particularly as it relates to solving important problems. But having those different experiences and those different perspectives isn't enough

if you still have those inequities. And so would I think of inequities? of inequity, I think of the historical contemporary ways in which some people are allowed to participate in other people or not, or allowed to participate in certain ways that other people are not. And so breaking down those barriers are also extremely important. So just having diversity, but still having those barriers, doesn't provide a those benefits. And then inclusion is really the hardest part because that also means that we are changing and dealing with issues of power, that everybody's perspective is somehow valued and

included, which means that's changing who determines what counts and what doesn't count. So an example that I often use is if I'm trying to solve a problem, would I rather have at the table six people who look just like me, who have exactly the same experiences I do, who know the same things that I do, who don't know the same things that I don't know in solving this problem, or would I rather have six people who are around the table with me with very different perspectives? different strengths, different weaknesses that we bring together to attack the problem. And in most cases, people would say, I'd rather have the former. I want that diversity of perspective. And that's great. But if you have that diversity of perspective, but yet three people in your group are not allowed to speak just by a function of who they are. maybe it's the color of the shirt that they're wearing or their gender or any number of things,

but they're not allowed to participate just because of who they are. That doesn't help you. And if two other people may be allowed to participate, but just two minutes ago, they were questioned outside of the room about whether or not they belong based on their identity, they're not going to be able to contribute at the full amount. So we have to both address diversity, equity, and inclusion altogether, or else we don't get the benefits of diversity in solving the big problems that we face as a community. Some DEI experts also argue for adding a B for belonging to the abbreviation DEI. Where do you stand on that concept?

Do we need to add the B? I actually think belonging should be an important part of it. But from my perspective, belonging is also a byproduct of feeling like one is included that one has ownership in the enterprise in which they're bringing in. And if one has that sense, then that inclusiveness also tends to lead to a sense of belonging. Let's switch gears for a minute and talk about your research, I mentioned in the introduction that you've spent your career studying racial identity in African Americans. How has the way that psychologists think about racial and ethnic identity

changed since you began working in the field? Well, first and foremost, more work is actually being done. It's being looked at in a way that it historically had not been. So not only are folks looking at racial identity and African Americans and people of African descent, but now we're looking at racial identity and ethnic identity across a broad group of communities and are focusing much more on the within-group variability or how different African-Americans experience the world and experience race, as opposed to when I first started, much of the work was, how are African-Americans different from whites? And such a binary focus diminishes that focus on the within-group variation. So African-Americans, just like any other community, are rich and vibrant in the sense that they have

commonalities that almost all African Americans experience. They have things that some African Americans experience and others don't. And they have attitudes, beliefs, experiences that are unique to them as individuals. And one of the most important parts of understanding African Americans and the other groups that have traditionally not been studied is understanding them in the context of their humanity. And the most important part of understanding one's humanity is understanding one's individuality and that there is individual differences and seeing people as being different. One of the fundamental findings that we found in social psychology over the years is that we tend to think about our within groups, the folks that were most close.

closest to, especially ourselves, in terms of individuals. And the impact that as individuals, when we do things, we see the humanity there. And we tend to think of other groups as larger groups and seeing their behaviors as being a function of who they are as a larger group. So we may say that, well, women do this because that's how women are. Versus if it's somebody that we actually know, we may say, well, Jan does this because Jan was having a bad day.

Or the situation around Jan is more the reason for why Jan may not be smiling, et cetera. And so it's that humanity that looking at within group variation provides that is so important that I think we've made significant strides towards, but still have a ways to go. So it's interesting that there's this need, this fundamental need we have to categorize and to put people in groups. But at the same time, it sounds like you have to resist some of that, not walking in with all these preconceived notions. Absolutely. Absolutely, absolutely. Those preconceived notions often fall into stereotypes that end up having real negative consequences of the life chances of others, as well as limits our ability to connect with people who are different from us. If you are interested in more stories about mental health and well-being, consider on our minds from PBS NewsHour student reporting labs. On Our Minds is a podcast about the teenage experience made by teens for teens.

Each season is hosted by two teens. This season we're covering topics such as defining success, gender and masculinity, laws affecting teens, music and how it boosts our mood, and more. Student reporters from around the country produce stories. We talk to psychologists, musicians, and authors to get advice. There's a lot on our minds and talking about it helps. On Our Minds, Season 4 is produced by PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs in collaboration with KUOW's Radioactive Youth Media. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Now, you're probably best known for developing something called the multimodal model of racial identity, which has been called transformative regarding how people think about racial identity. Can you explain what that model means? Well, so that model really attempts to understand the role that race plays in African-Americans' psychological lives. That in this society, being of African descent, race is such an important characteristic in the society that at some level, African-Americans have to define for themselves what it means in terms of who they are. And for some individuals, that definition is one that is really focused on being race as a significant part of who they are. Whereas for others, it's only a small part of who they are. And for others, still, it's not an important part of how one defines themselves.

And so understanding that variation in the significance of race is one of the goals of the model. But along with understanding that variation and the significance that an individual plays on race, we also differ in terms of what we actually think it means to be black, what it means to be a member of our group. We differ in the extent to which we feel very positive about being a member of that group or less positive about being a member of that group. We also differ in terms of the extent to which we think others feel positive towards our group or less positive towards our group. And then a fourth component of this is the way in which we think about our ideologies around what it means to be black.

So some of us may emphasize the commonalities amongst all people. and again, de-emphasize the uniqueness of being black. Others may emphasize the commonalities amongst all black folks when they think about being black, which we would call a nationalist ideology. First, we would call more of a humanist ideology. Some of us focus more in terms of the, larger American experience in the African American term and see themselves as being strongly connected to traditional mainstream American ideas, cultural values, etc. Whereas still others will focus

on issues of oppression and see commonalities with other oppressed groups. They may differ in terms of who those groups are, but they see a commonality. So if you break down all breakdowns down just the notion of what it means to be black in African Americans, you can see a significant variation in terms of how they psychologically experience one's blackness. And what we found is that that psychological experience of one's blackness has implications for a number of different outcomes when coupled with the different types of racial contexts in which today exist. I mentioned in the introduction that DEI efforts have become a political flashpoint in recent years,

and many programs have faced pushback and criticism and even legislative bans, particularly at the state level. As someone who spent your life doing this work, do you feel frustrated by this? And do you think these efforts are still moving even haltingly in a positive direction? I feel incredibly frustrated, and part because the nature of the conversation is often, and the nature of the critique is often at such a surface level and such an uninformed level. So one of the things that I teach my students is that when you begin to have a debate around a set of issues, it's important that you actually define the underlying consequences. that you're attempting to get at. Unfortunately, what's happened is DEI has been defined in ways that have nothing to do with most of the DEI efforts that are at play on our campuses, in our organizations, our corporations.

They have little to do with the actual practices, policies, procedures, procedures that are going on under the idea of DEI. But yet the concept is used as a wedge to create identity threat such that, again, either resources are given or being taken away from one group and given to another small minority group, or there's efforts to try to brainwash people to think in a particular ideology or a particular, usually political ideology, that is, again, seen as a threat to individuals. And people have utilized this, quite frankly, for their own personal, political and professional motives and opportunities to get ahead, when in fact, when you think about what DEI is ultimately about,

most of us would not be outraged by the work that's happening. But one of the criticisms that I often hear about DEI efforts, particularly in business, is that there is not a lot of empirical research demonstrating the value. How do you respond to that assertion? What do you say to the critics who demand show me the numbers? Well, so first of all, I would actually argue there is a great deal of evidence. So there's a great deal of evidence, as I mentioned, that diverse perspectives lead to more creative problem solving, to more ideas, and ultimately more effective ideas. And just about Every business, and I would argue educational case, ultimately comes down to an issue of problem solve.

And given that diversity is so important to innovation, is so important to creativity, is so important to problem solving. Having a diversity of ideas, a diversity of perspectives is key to just about every industry's mission or goal. And I would argue is key to just about every field in education's mission and goal. I would argue that the sciences are fundamentally about problem solving. The social sciences are fundamentally about problem solving. Most of the professions are fundamentally. about problem solving. And so having that diversity of perspective is incredibly important in that particular space. Now, people will then say, yeah, I'm all for diversity of thought. That's

absolutely, in fact, I worry that DEI keeps us from having diversity of thought. Well, the reality is that diversity of thought really comes from a diversity of, lived experiences. That diversity of thought leads to different questions, but those different questions come from individuals' different lived experiences and understanding with regards to how the world works, which we often think of in terms of schemas. I would argue, though, those different experiences about how the world worked are deeply influenced by our various social identities, which again, we have plenty of data to demonstrate. So as a large African-American male who played football, my experience in the world, is very different than someone who is Kim. Very different

from Kim's experiences. And there are things that you would see that I would not see. There are questions that you would ask that I would not ask. And not having that person. not having your perspective in the room damages not only myself, but I mean, not only you, but also damages myself and our larger ability to do good work. So there, and we have the work of Kathy Phillips, the work of Scott Page, so many others have demonstrated the value of diversity with regards to problems. off. Where it becomes a challenge is we often define DEI work as a class or training, and that we assume that DEI training for one day is going to change long-term, historic, societal problems that have happened for generations, and we don't find that actually working. D.E. Do we expect anything different? So DEI is not something that's in a can.

It is not something that is delivered in a single shot. It must fundamentally impact the way in which we as structures, communities, and organizations actually operate. It must change those processes. It must change those procedures. Must change those policies and change those cultures in such a way. that it provides opportunity for a wide variety of experiences and for individuals who are there to feel as if they are both included and that they are not in spaces where they're experiencing

discrimination and other forms of attack as a function of that difference. I want to turn for a moment to the Supreme Court decision in the case of students for fair admissions versus president and fellows of Harvard College, which found that colleges and universities cannot use race as a factor in admissions. What do you think the impact of that decision will be not only on colleges and universities, but down the road in our society generally? On a personal level, I was deeply disappointed, though I wish I could say surprised. the fact of the matter is race in particular, along with a number of other social identities,

but race in particular from the founding of this country up until very, very, very, very recently, has fundamentally been a determinant of individuals' life chances. Just simply by being born in a particular racial category, your probability of success, whether it's educational success, whether it's occupational success, whether it's experiencing violence, whether it's experiencing any number of disease, whether it's how long one actually lives, has been fundamentally tied to race. And in many, many, many, many of those instances can also be demonstratively tied to policies that this country has put in place to unlevel, quote unquote, the playing field.

And the assumption that by simply saying we are no longer going to look at race as a way to address some of those inequities. And for that matter, not just race, but also gender and national origin, we're also part of the decision is extremely naive and can only make sense from a space of privilege. So it's like you're running a race. And in that race, for the first three quarters of a mile, you put chains on half of the participants and you have them run the race and then you get to a hundred feet from the finish line and you see these disparities there and then say, okay, we're not going to put any more chains on people and say, finish the race. It seems to me to be really misguided, not particularly

well thought out in all of those reasons. So that's my personal experience. Now, with that said, I would argue for my colleagues and having been a chief diversity officer at an institution in a state that had basically already had those same challenges that the Supreme Court put nationally in Michigan, previously in the... 2004, the state passed a constitutional amendment that banned the use of race, gender, and national origin and admissions. And so we have to work very, very hard to find legally permissible ways to address racial, gender, national origin disparities that we all know still exist. And it's going to be incumbent upon those who care about diversity, equity, and inclusion and having a just society to work, to, again, work within the law to find effective ways to address these inequalities. and also to work to find ways to ultimately, hopefully change the law.

That's playing the long game. Yeah. On what might be a more positive note, and we can talk about it, is it change? We're seeing in the culture around recognizing the sins of the past, whether that's changing the names of schools and streets to remove the names of enslavers or changing the names of pro sports teams in response to complaints from indigenous people. people, for example. And in the case of APA, we issued a formal apology for policies and practices that denigrated or just ignored people of color over time in the practice and discipline of psychology. How important are these moves? Are they mostly performative or are they truly a step toward infusing DEI into our culture?

That's a very good question. First, I would say they're absolutely performative. And performative is important. So I believe that's an important step. Symbols matter. They're a fundamental part of our culture. And so addressing those performative aspects are important. But they cannot be seen as sufficient in any way. So I see them as necessary, but not sufficient. They have to to be one part of the level of change that has to occur. Part of that change has to always be structural. Part of that change also has to be about redistributing opportunities, redistributing power, redistributing wealth, if one is actually redistributing access and opportunity. These are all part of the change. But if we stop at the

performative and say, we did it, then we are dooming ourselves to continue inequality. And that continued inequality not only dooms those of us who are

on the tough end of that, but it also dooms the larger society in terms of being able to actually address the major problems that we face. So I often think, for instance, the cure of cancer, cure to cancer may be sitting in a perspective that a kid in a low-performing school in an intercity space who has a way of asking a very different question just based on what that kid sees every day walking to school that

forces them to ask a question that's just slightly different from the way in which you've always done it in the past that could actually be the cure. But because that kid is stuck in a low-performing school and that will not have an opportunity to connect with our highest performing and our highest resource colleges and universities, they will never have an opportunity to solve that particular problem, or the problem of global warming, or the problem of peace in the world. All of these things that we face as a larger human society

is dependent on us having our entire human equity, our human capital in play. And when we allow parts of our society to be systematically excluded from our resources and our opportunities to solve problems, again, not only do they suffer, but we as a larger community also suffer. Last question. I want to circle back to the talk that you gave at the APA Convention. on why diversity matters for psychological science. Why is diversity an especially important issue in psychology and what could and should psychology be doing to address and increase diversity in psychological research? Well, first of all, it is actually relatively simple.

So psychology has historically been about studying human behavior. But studying human behavior from an extremely narrow perspective. So studying it primarily in Western, educated, industrial, rich, democratic societies or has been captured weird societies. And even within those very weird societies, the small, small, small slice of the human experience, we tend to, you could say predominantly white, predominantly male, predominantly heterosexual, predominantly able, bodied spaces, and experiences. And as a result, we have a very, very small picture of what normative human behavior actually looks like.

And until we begin to both study. the vast majority of the human experience, include in the folks who are actually doing the study, the vast majority of the human experience, because if you don't, you will risk misinterpreting, misunderstanding what you're actually seeing and doing great harm, which psychology has historically done in many cases. And we have to be willing to accept those new ideas and those new perspectives as enriching our understanding of normative human behavior and not just say, ah, well, he studies African Americans, and that's really nice, that's quaint. But what does that have to do with human behavior, which I have been asked on numerous occasions. throughout my career. And yet we have to change that particular perspective. Does that mean a lot of the science is downright wrong or it's just skewed? I would say a lot of the science, we don't know how much it's skewed because, again, it's important to always remember that when I study African Americans in my work, I'm studying

humans too. So there are certain things about African Americans that are universal to all humans, most likely. And there's certain things about African Americans' experiences that are probably unique to African Americans. And there's certain things that overlap across some African Americans and some non-African American. So we don't really know how limited our psychology actually is, which is even more scary, because we don't really know how limited our psychology actually is, which is, We don't know. And so I think it's especially important for psychology as a science, as a practice, to be as diverse, equitable, and inclusive.

Because we're fundamentally talking about the human experience. Well, Dr. Sellers, I want to thank you for joining me today. It's been very interesting talking to you. I appreciate your time. Kim, it has been absolutely my pleasure. I've really enjoyed our conversation. You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website at www. www. speakingof psychology.org or on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you've heard, please leave us a review.

If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us at speaking of psychology at APA.org. Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lee Wynerman. Our sound editor is Chris Condihan. Thank you for listening for the American Psychological Association. I'm Kim Mills.