Page 394 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

15. COMBATING ORGANIZATIONAL DISCRIMINATION
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beneficiaries of affirmative action, and these inferences occurred regard­
less of whether the affirmative action policy was explicitly stated or was
only presumed to have been utilized, and whether the beneficiaries were
women or members of racial minorities. Therefore, it is clear that this phe­
nomenon is both widespread and affects a broad range of targets in variety
of situations. But what is the ultimate impact of such inferences? Do they
persist when information about performance becomes available, especially
information that is inconsistent with them? If inferences of incompetence
arising from the affirmative action label are quickly overridden when dis­
confirming evidence becomes available, then they are ultimately of little
importance. If these negative inferences prevail even in the face of con­
tradictory information, however, then there is clear reason for concern.
Questions such as these led us to explore the boundaries of the affirma­
tive action induced stigma of incompetence and to attempt to identify the
conditions that regulate when it does or does not occur.
There is research that suggests that having performance information
may limit incompetence inferences regarding those associated with affir­
mative action. Many researchers have found that category-based inferences
dominate impression formation only when information is otherwise min­
imal (Fiske, Neuberg, Beattie, & Milberg, 1987). Indeed, evidence from a
variety of literatures demonstrates that individuating information about
a person can weaken or override the influence of categorical information
(Locksley, Hepburn, & Ortiz, 1982; Nisbitt, Zukier, & Lemley, 1981; Tosi &
Einbinder, 1985). According to these findings, as performance information
about a beneficiary becomes available, it should mitigate the effects of the
affirmative action label.
However, there also is evidence suggesting that it is not all types in­
formation that will preclude inferences of incompetence (Heilman, 1984;
Krueger & Rothbart, 1988; Kunda & Sherman-Williams, 1992). These stud­
ies make apparent that the information must not only be relevant but also
clearly diagnostic if it is to have impact on that judgment. If the informa­
tion is vague or equivocal, then that information can easily be distorted to
conform to the categorical prototype (Nieva & Gutek, 1980).
These ideas led us to think that although information about on-the-
job performance effectiveness can override the inferences of incompe­
tence arising from the affirmative action label, this is likely to occur only
when the information is clear and unambiguous in its implications—
a not-so-common occurrence in work organizations in which informa­
tion about performance often lacks precision and frequently cannot be
attributed exclusively to one individual. We therefore decided not only
to investigate the general effects of disconfirming performance informa­
tion on inferences of incompetence, but also to test the persistence of the
stigma of incompetence arising from affirmative action when there are