Emily Vargas
PhD’ 18
Federal law mitigated overt forms of racism and sexism in organizations with the implementation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, social scientists have identified modern forms of discrimination that do not violate law, but reinforce racial and gender workplace disparities. One form of this discrimination is incivility. This low-intensity conduct, which lacks clear intent to harm, includes nonverbal behaviors, rude language, interruption, and condescension (Andersson & Pearson, 1999). While plenty of research has examined the consequences of remaining vigilant in the face of major forms of discrimination, almost no research has examined the consequences of remaining vigilant toward potentially being a target of incivility. This is necessary to investigate, because incivility is the most common form of discrimination, and it currently a legal form of discrimination.
We plan on running a series of experiments to examine a.) if anticipated incivility impacts perceptions of the organizations (e.g, perceptions of the leader), how it impacts women and racial minorities’ engagement with the organization (e.g., intentions to apply into an organization), and their projected career success (e.g., ability to become a leader).
Library Mentor: Hailey Mooney