Lay Beliefs of the Ethical Decision Quality Advantage for Diverse Groups.

Although people seemingly favor diverse teams, they tend to prefer non-diverse ones when they are a part of the team. We examine how lay beliefs about diversity and the nature of the task define group formation choices. Across three studies, we find that diversity is valued more for tasks that involve ethical judgments or evaluations, compared to other types of tasks. In this process, the match between the range of perspectives that a task requires and the assumed range that a group provides is critical, such that diverse groups are believed to offer a wider range of perspectives than less diverse groups, in turn leading to a perception of ethical decision quality advantage for diverse groups: A belief that diverse teams make better decisions than non-diverse ones, especially for ethical tasks. Our research helps to elucidate when diversity presumably provides more benefits and why diversity is chosen for groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]