On diversity in diversity: Ideological shifts in attitudes and understanding of diversity

https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672211028141

Commentary

Three studies have investigated the possibility that attitudes toward "diversity" are not unidimensional but multidimensional and that ideological differences in diversity attitudes may vary as a function of diversity subtypes.

Study 1 (n = 1,001) found the factor structure of attitudes toward 23 diverse community characteristics to be two-dimensional, with factors including demographic and viewpoint diversity emerging.

Conservatives showed more positive attitudes toward viewpoint diversity, while liberals showed more positive attitudes toward demographic diversity.

Study 2 (n= 1,012) replicated the findings of Study 1 and extended the results of Study 1 by showing attitudes toward the general concept of diversity and predicted attitudes toward demographic diversity, but not viewpoint diversity.

In Study 3, 386 participants assessed the extent to which a set of features were associated with a typical understanding of diversity. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) revealed that people differentiated between viewpoint, demographic, and consumer diversity, with conservatives perceiving viewpoint features as more relevant to "diversity," while liberals perceived demographic features as more relevant.

Thus, the results show that the way "diversity" is perceived differs depending on the principle. This means that it may be necessary to view the idea of diversity in a diverse way.