Replication of a study from “Counterfeit Diversity: How Strategically Misrepresenting Gender Diversity Dampens Organizations’ Perceived Sincerity and Elevates Women’s Identity Threat Concerns” (JPSP | Kroeper, Williams & Murphy 2022)

We ran a replication of study 3 from this paper, which assessed men’s and women’s beliefs about hypothetical scenarios in which they imagined applying to and working for technology companies with different ratios of men and women on staff (either 3:1 or 1:1). In the original study, when a company had a male:female staff ratio of 3:1 (even if its promotional materials display an equal balance of men and women), it was perceived as not being sincerely interested in increasing gender diversity, and women (but not men) were more likely to have identity threat concerns about working there (e.g., concerns about not having their contributions valued due to their gender). Also, both men and women (but especially women) tended to be less interested in working for that organization. These effects were mediated by the perception that the company was not sincerely interested in increasing gender diversity. Our findings were mostly consistent with those of the original study (see full report), except that we did not find that gender moderated the indirect effects of company diversity on interest in working for the company.