Publications
Academic publications are provided as a professional courtesy to ensure timely dissemination of academic work for individual, non-commercial purposes. As noted in each paper, copyright resides with the respective copyright holders.
Arnett, R.D., Serenity Lee, Patricia Hewlin, A Curation Approach to Identity Management:
The Costs of Combining Identity Expression and Suppression
Administrative Science Quarterly
Many organizations want to increase diversity among their workforce, but employees from marginalized groups consistently face uncertainty about how to navigate their identities at work, which can lead to high turnover among these employees. To highlight the unexpected ways in which such risks can arise for employees and organizations, we investigate the intrapersonal consequences of a curation approach to navigating social identities in the workplace. Curation involves frequent identity expression (integrating an identity into the workplace, such as discussing identity-based traditions) and frequent identity suppression (concealing aspects of an identity at work, such as hiding concerns about discrimination). Given that expression and suppression both have benefits and risks, combining these behaviors into a curation approach could be seen as a socially adept and professionally beneficial solution. However, focusing on the intrapersonal experiences of employees of color, we argue that, compared to primarily expressing or primarily suppressing a minority identity, curation is more psychologically detrimental to these employees. Combining expression and suppression fosters ambivalence—conflicting thoughts about whether one’s identity is a resource or a liability—which is psychologically aversive. In two surveys and an internal meta-analysis (of the two studies in the manuscript and a supplemental study reported in supplementary online materials), curation was associated with greater ambivalence and psychological strain, which, in turn, were associated with greater turnover intentions. While our core findings emerge with employees of color, we also provide exploratory evidence that the costs of curation extend to women. Our findings regarding curation reveal a previously unrecognized well-being risk for employees from marginalized groups and a retention risk for organizations. We offer recommendations for future research and practice to address the conditions that lead employees to engage in curation.
Arnett, R.D. (2023). Uniting through difference: Rich cultural-identity expression as a conduit to inclusion.
Organization Science.
Although previous research suggests that bringing attention to minority cultural identities in the workplace can lead to professional penalties, this research provides promising evidence that the opposite can occur. I examine how cultural minority employees engaging in rich and meaningful conversations about their racial, ethnic, and national backgrounds (referred to as rich cultural-identity expression) influences majority-group coworkers’ inclusive behaviors, such as majority-group employees’ willingness to socially integrate with and professionally support minority coworkers. Three experiments found evidence of majority-group employees behaving more—not less—inclusively toward minority coworkers who engaged in rich cultural-identity expression, as opposed to small talk that did not bring attention to a minority cultural background. Even when minority employees richly expressed negatively valenced cultural information that could provoke anxiety (such as issues with discrimination), this form of sharing had positive effects on most measures of inclusive behavior in Studies 2 and 3 (although one exception was found in Study 3). No benefits were observed when minority employees engaged in surface-level cultural-identity expression (Studies 2 and 3) and intimate, noncultural self-disclosure (Study 2). The power of rich cultural-identity expression is its ability to increase majority-group individuals’ status perceptions of, feelings of closeness to, and sense of learning potential from minority coworkers. This research provides promising evidence that minority employees may be able to express valued aspects of their cultural identities while gaining—as opposed to jeopardizing—inclusion.​
​
Runner Up for the AOM OB Best Paper Award
This paper was the 2024 runner-up for the Academy of Management Organizational Behavior Division Best Paper Award, recognizing its contribution to advancing research in organizational behavior.
​
Links:
-
Knowledge at Wharton Summary
Rattan, A., Kroeper, K., Arnett, R.D., Brown, A., Murphy, M. (2022). Not such a complainer anymore: Bias confrontation that signals a growth mindset can undercut backlash.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
We report the first investigation of whether observers draw information about mindsets from behavior, specifically prejudice confrontation. We tested two questions across 10 studies (N = 3,168). First, would people who observe someone confront a biased comment (vs. remain silent) see them as endorsing more growth (vs. fixed) mindsets about prejudice and bias? If so, would the growth mindset perceptions that arise from confrontation (vs. remaining silent) attenuate the backlash that observers exhibit against confronters? We investigated these questions using scenarios (Studies 1, 2a–b, 4, 5a–d), naturalistic confrontations of national, race, and gender stereotypes reported retrospectively (Study 3), and an in-person laboratory experiment of actual confrontations of racial bias (Study 6). Correlational and experimental methods yielded support for our core hypotheses: People spontaneously imbue someone who confronts a biased comment with more growth mindset beliefs about prejudice and bias (Studies 1, 2a–b, 4, 6), regardless of whether participants observe the confrontation (Studies 1, 2a–b, 5a–d) or are being confronted themselves (Studies 2a–4, 6). The growth mindset perceptions arising from these confrontations suppress backlash, assessed by classic interpersonal perceptions (Studies 4–5) and judgments of interpersonal warmth and willingness to interact again in the future (Study 6), both when the confronter was a target of the biased behavior (Studies 1–5), and when they were an ally (Study 6), in both correlational studies (Study 3–4) and when growth mindset (about personality, Study 5; about prejudice, Study 6) was manipulated, confirming causality. We discuss implications for the study of mindsets, confrontation, and intergroup relations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Arnett, R.D., Sidanius, J. (2018). Sacrificing status for social harmony: Concealing relatively high status identities from one’s peers. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
Given strong human desires to be respected and understood, we demonstrate a surprising tendency: individuals consistently conceal relatively high status identities (sacrificing status and authenticity) to preserve social harmony. We experimentally demonstrated that, contrary to third-party observers’ expectations (Study 1), individuals were more likely to conceal relatively high status identities, compared to similar status identities, from their peers (Studies 1–5). Concealment was an effort to mitigate interpersonal threats (to the self, others, and belonging; Study 3) and continued even when individuals could not be held responsible for disclosure (Study 4). We found modest evidence that relative status still impacted concealment in settings encouraging status hierarchy (Study 5). Thus, individuals have a persistent discomfort with elevating their status above others. We conclude by considering the promising implications of identifying conditions that encourage high status individuals to prioritize social harmony, as well as caveats regarding how identity concealment may inadvertently reinforce inequality.