Things like: How are people like me seen and treated here? Will I be supported here? Will it be a fair place for people like me? Diversity puts us in a state of mind in which identity is top of mind. Stressful emotions can arise. Thoughts scramble as we work to decipher and make meaning. To capture the anxious, ruminative nature of this state, my term for it is “churn,” a term whose utility I suspect will increase as the diversity of our life settings increases.

1. What Is Churn?

Churn is the mental agitation and physical stress we can experience in diverse settings. Its immediate cause, as noted, is stereotype or identity threat— the threat of being judged and treated badly based on negative feelings or stereotypes about our identities: our religion, race, age, sex, sexual orientation. This threat begins with knowledge that virtually everyone has— of the feelings toward, and stereotypes about, the major identities in our society. Then, when we’re in situations on which these feelings or stereotypes apply, this knowledge carries a threat: that we could be judged and treated in terms of those feelings and stereotypes.

There is poignancy to stereotype threat: It’s felt most by those in the stereotyped group who are most identified with achieving in the area where the stereotype applies, and who are trying to do challenging or frustrating things in that area. It affects most the vanguard of the group— as in Mirna wanting to succeed as an ultrarunner; as in women trying to break glass ceilings in finance; as in highly invested African American law students taking challenging state bar exams; as in white American males trying to succeed in elite basketball. That’s when, in the heat of frustration, the stereotype’s dark message— “everybody knows that, because of who you are, you probably can't do well at this, and that you probably don’t belong”— becomes personally relevant. That’s when it can cause enough churn to interfere with performance.

She keeps remembering. Identity threat, in this way, is more blanketing than the threat of interpersonal judgements. It’s there anywhere the stereotype applies, and in those settings, it can come from anybody, anytime.

Imagine this playing out in important settings like school, the workplace, or public spaces. Being haunted by a dehumanizing stereotype about your group’s humanity, intelligence, or goodness can keep one in remembering mode, as a painful condition of life.

So yes, settings and their features— before anyone in the setting does anything— can trigger identity threat and churn. Settings have agency of their own, an agency that can be a problem in an identity-diverse society trying to overcome stratification. Many of our settings— corporate boardrooms, waiting rooms, DEI workshops, art galleries and museums, hiking trails, neighbourhoods, faculty meeting rooms, classrooms, country clubs, college campuses— have features (from their demographics to pictures on the wall) that can push one or another identity into churn.