Gender & Diversity Talk Series: "What drives Perceived Diversity?"

The Dominance of Richness in Diversity Perceptions

16. Juni

As part of the Gender & Diversity talk series, Dr. Johanna Woitzel will present her research on how people judge diversity and why those judgments often diverge from formal quantitative measures

• Monday, 15 June 2026
• Start: 16:15 Uhr
• Location: C 40.255

Across seven studies, she finds that people place disproportionate weight on compositional richness (i.e., the number of distinct categories represented) when evaluating how diverse a group, team, or organization appears. As a result, compositions with more represented groups are often perceived as more diverse, even when they are less diverse according to standard quantitative diversity benchmarks. The findings suggest that perceived diversity is shaped by a psychologically salient cue that is not equivalently captured by formal diversity metrics. This has important implications for how diversity is signaled, interpreted, and potentially misperceived in real-world settings, including the risk that token representation can create an inflated impression of diversity.