Their [Frank Dobbin and Jiwook Jung] results showed that although adding more women to boards did not change the firms’ performance, it led to a decrease in the firms’ stock valuation. These findings highlight an alarming reality: irrespective of the actual performance differences between men and women, people—and, in this case, investors—are unlikely to change their beliefs, and beliefs drive decisions.

The results were different. Compared to women who watched the balanced video and to men who watched either video, women who watched the unbalanced video had elevated heart rates and blood pressure, and they sweated more. And, as an indication of their preoccupying churn, they remembered fewer incidental features of either the room they were in or of the video itself. These women were math and science majors. They cared about diversity in these fields— where they might spend their careers.

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.

To be clear, the other programs are extraordinarily strong. At the time of the survey, Berkley had the second-highest number of science departments ranked in the top five nationally. Weaker science wasn’t the cause of their weaker performance with women and minorities. Nor did it reflect a lack of interest in seeing all students succeed. The cause seemed to be a lack of ambiguity-reducing structures and practices. Other programs surely had some of these elements. But not all of them. And perhaps not as well coordinated as those in Chemistry.

Welcoming. When we enter a setting that is important to us— a university, a recreational area, a diversity workshop, a workplace— a churn-causing question hangs in the air: How will my identity— who I am— affect my experience here? To build trust in diverse settings, it’s important to give people a welcoming experience that addresses that question.