DIVERSITY

(Published in the East Bay Psychiatric Association Newsletter, February 2008)


When I went to college back in the early 1960’s, my sixteen hundred classmates included only a handful of African-Americans and about the same number of students of Asian ancestry. There was also a sprinkling of foreign students, mostly from prominent, well-to-do families. And, oh yes, there were no women in the class. My college had a sister school which allowed the women to attend the same classes, but the women lived in dormitories at some distance from the men’s living quarters, and they were not allowed to study in our main library or eat in our dining halls.

Almost all of my classmates were white, male, urban, and middle class or above socio-economically. The major points of diversity back then were whether one had gone to public school or to “prep” school, and whether you came from a different part of the country. Beyond that, one didn’t talk much about diversity. In fact, there was some comfort in knowing that most of one’s classmates came from similar backgrounds. Recently, as you will read below, it has become clearer how diversity is advantageous.

Since that era, there has been an enormous amount of effort expended on seeking diversity in universities and in the workplace. Some of this has been driven by the social policy of affirmative action for minorities and disadvantaged populations. Most colleges now also include significant numbers of students from other parts of the globe. And, of course, women not only make up half of the student bodies of what used to be all male colleges, but these gender-equal student bodies now live together and interact in all manners. So much for my college bygone era of homogeneity of the 1960’s!

Now there is new evidence that increasing diversity has been for the good, but for reasons different from what was originally envisioned as simply opening doors for groups previously marginalized. It now appears that there is an inherent advantage that flows from mixing people of different backgrounds when it comes to problem solving.

Professor Scott Page of the University of Michigan has published a book entitled “The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies.” His main finding, using mathematical modeling and case studies, is that “diverse groups of people bring to organizations more and different ways of seeing a problem, and thus faster/better ways of solving it.” Professor Page explains that in today’s world of complex problems, organizations where everyone thinks in the same way lead people to get stuck at the same point. But in diverse groups, people get stuck at different points in a problem, and thus collaboratively arrive at better, faster decisions. In fact, Professor Page found that the most diverse companies are the most innovative. Furthermore, breakthroughs in science increasingly come from teams of bright, diverse people, which is why interdisciplinary work is the biggest trend in scientific work today.

Regardless of one’s political persuasion, socio-economic background, nationality, place of residence, or gender, this new information can help one shape conclusions about social policies as varied as affirmative action, immigration, hiring practices, and college admissions.

No one person can design a rocket ship to get people into outer space, or construct a silicon microchip to run computers. People have to work as teams to accomplish such complex feats, and diversity in groups offers advantages in solving complex problems. It’s a big, interesting, globally diverse world out there, and if our schools, companies, and nation are to continue to be at the forefront of innovation, we had better heed this knowledge while going forward.