Authenticity and authorship: A dilemma in diversity research'?
Derek R. Avery · PsycEXTRA Dataset · 2008
I recently had a very thought provoking conversation with a graduate stu-dent in industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology who wondered if belonging to the racioethnic majority (i.e., being White) would somehow obscure the development of the ability to conduct good diversity research. I did my best to reassure the student that it wouldn’t but felt compelled to acknowl-edge that others might feel differently. That discussion made me think about something seemingly unique to diversity research—the perceived importance of the author’s identity. No other subfield of I-O research seems to have a com-monly accepted author prototype accompanying it. For instance, there is no expectation that all personality researchers share any particular characteristic. Furthermore, no one would question the validity of a personality article based on the characteristics of the author. Imagine how comical it would be if some-one were to say: “I wouldn’t put too much faith in the findings of this person-ality article because the author is an introvert. ” Fill in race for personality and White for introvert, however, and it becomes a different conversation for some.