Page 401 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

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HEILMAN AND HAYNES
ambiguity surrounding an individual's selection, and affirmative action is
only inferred. Whether stated or inferred, affirmative action should have
the same consequences. But when is it inferred? When is it that an individ­
ual is thought to be hired preferentially because of his or her demographic
group membership?
Inferences about why someone has been selected for a position are in­
fluenced not only by the characteristics of that individual but also by the
context in which the selection occurs. Attribution theory predicts that when
something out of the ordinary occurs it will spark efforts to make sense
of the unexpected event (Hastie, 1984; Pyszczynkski & Greenberg, 1981).
With respect to the work environment, such cues may include the presence
of a solo female or Black employee in an otherwise all male or all White
group, respectively, or the sudden hiring of large numbers of persons rep­
resentative of a demographic group that was not previously represented
in a particular job or industry.
Of course, there are many possible explanations for the presence of such
unexpected newcomers. However, with the visibility of affirmative action
policies in recent decades and the widespread belief that it is a major fac­
tor in personnel decision making (Kravitz & Platania, 1993), affirmative
action is likely to be a salient as well as readily available and plausible
explanation for unexpected newcomers. In addition, because it requires
far less cognitive exertion than modifying group stereotypes to account
for their unexpected presence, the affirmative action explanation is much
more efficient and therefore more convenient to use. Therefore we sus­
pected that when the selection of a woman or minority group member
is out of the ordinary, and it provokes a search for an explanation and
none is provided, there will be a predisposition toward inferring that af­
firmative action was involved even when there is no direct evidence for
it. In other words, we expected a proclivity to attribute the out of ordi­
nary appearance of those from societally targeted demographic groups
to preferential selection when a vacuum exists about the actual basis of
selection.
To test these ideas, we designed a study (Heilman & Blader, 2001) in
which undergraduate participants, both male and female, were told that
the research concerned decision making in graduate school admissions
and that they would be reviewing the application materials of a student
recently admitted to a doctoral program at their university. We expected
that when the selection policy was left ambiguous, a solo woman would
elicit inferences of preferential selection on the basis of sex that would be
as strong as those made when an affirmative action policy was actually
made explicit. This was not expected to occur when there were many other
women in the cohort, and the presence of any one woman was not out