Page 397 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

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HEILMAN AND HAYNES
Although the performance information provided through the perfor­
mance review instrument always conveyed a high level of performance
success, the clarity of the source of success differed for participants in the
clear and the ambiguous success conditions. For participants in the clear
success condition, the supervisor's description of the employee's job ac­
tivity was the same as that used in the first study. However, for those in
the ambiguous success condition, we appended the following sentences:
"Throughout this period Mark (Wendy) was coached by a senior computer
programmer (as are all new hires in our department). The coach was avail­
able to Mark (Wendy) on an "as needed" basis, and could be called upon
to act as a consultant when problems arose."
Results indicated that despite indications of substantial success, com­
petence ratings of affirmative action women were equal to those of
nonaffirmative action women or men only when the information con­
veyed about success was not ambiguous. When the information conveyed
created ambiguity about the source of their success, competence ratings
of affirmative action women differed from ratings of both nonaffirmative
action women and men. Ratings of the appropriateness of a salary increase
followed a similar pattern: Only participants in unambiguous success con­
ditions treated an employee who had benefited from affirmative action
similarly to the others; when information about the source of their suc­
cess was ambiguous, employees associated with affirmative action were
treated more harshly in terms of salary recommendations than either the
nonaffirmative action women or the men.
The findings from these two studies are consistent in their message—
only success information that is unequivocal in its implications for an in-
dividual's competence negates the stigma of incompetence attached to
beneficiaries of affirmative action. Evidently, ambiguity allows people to
dismiss or ignore information, and the disconfirmatory potential of suc­
cessful performance information can be undercut by its lack of clarity.
This suggests that the negative competence inferences accompanying the
affirmative action label are not easily overpowered by job performance
information. People seem to resist relinquishing a negative view of those
associated with affirmative action, and these individuals remain incompe­
tent in the minds of onlookers unless they are "proved" to be competent.
These findings are particularly important because ambiguity about per­
formance is inherent in so many typical organizational settings. The con­
ditions necessary to counteract the affirmative action stigma often are not
present either because the success of a work product cannot be objectively
assessed and inference is required to evaluate it, or because the work con­
text is such that work is performed interdependently in teams, and the
unique contribution of any one individual to the team product is difficult