We spoke with Dr. He to learn more about how her research relates to ESS and EDI initiatives more broadly…

Please tell us a little about your field of study, and what was the path that led you to be interested in this area?

I received my PhD in Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, and I am currently a professor of Management & Organizations and Behavioral Decision-Making at UCLA Anderson. Broadly speaking, my field of study is in Organizational Behavior (OB), which is a very broad, multidisciplinary field that draws from Psychology, Sociology, Economics, etc. to understand individual and group level behavior in Organizations.

One of the things I love most about OB is how interdisciplinary it is, and as a PhD student I remember reading broadly across disciplines to see how different disciplines have complementary perspectives on the same research questions, and I’ve adopted that approach in my research too. In terms of how I got here, I actually started out as an English major as an undergrad minoring in Psychology — but I began to develop a strong interest in Social Psychology throughout those years. I eventually joined a few Psychology labs to do research, which I also loved, but found myself wanting to know the “so what?” about this research – in terms of behavioral outcomes and downstream consequences that had practical implications. That’s what led me eventually to pursue my PhD and career in OB!

What are you currently working on within the ESS research team as an Assistant Professor at UCLA Anderson?

One thing I’ve been working on, carried over from when I was a student member of the ESS research team in SINC, is about engineering culture within undergraduate engineering students. This is joint work with my fellow SINC team members Will Hall, Jackie Koyama, and Sonia Kang. I think one of the most exciting and unique things about this paper is that we take an inductive, qualitative approach — rather than using surveys and online experiments with pre-determined hypotheses, we conducted focus groups and interviews to build a theory about engineering culture from the ground up. What we uncovered in this project was a  “culture of suffering” within the engineering community at the university — a culture characterized by difficult course work and tremendous course load, dependence on social validation and commiseration about the course load, strong identification with engineering, all taking place within a very isolated, insular engineering community.

Although past research shows that strong identification with a professional identity (i.e., engineering) can increase belonging by highlighting a common identity across differences by personal identities (e.g., gender, race, etc.), we find in this case that strong reliance with the collective engineering community may unintentionally perpetuate inequality. Specifically, this strong identification resulted in engineering students’ parroting of cultural narratives of inclusion and meritocracy within the community, and defending the community against any notion of gender bias. For women, this came at the expense of downplaying their lived experiences as women such that women turned a blind eye to instances of bias or differential treatment based on their gender identity in order to maintain and protect their sense of belonging to this superordinate collective community. Ultimately, this perpetuated an echo chamber within the engineering community that reinforced and maintained surface-level cultural narratives of inclusion and meritocracy that ironically allowed for a deep-level culture of masculinity, reactance, denial, and gender bias to exist and persist without being questioned or brought to light. Right now, we are focusing on writing up this paper for submission for publication at a Management journal.

How do you see your research as applying to gender inclusion and diversity more broadly?

My research focuses on taking a systemic approach to understanding gender inequality — both in terms of why individual-level efforts (unconscious bias training, the “Lean In” approach) is not sufficient, but also what organizations can do to make systemic changes that can move the needle on this persistent societal problem. In some of my past work, I found that that women manage impressions of their gender for male-dominated jobs by using less feminine language in their cover letters, in part because they anticipate gender discrimination from employers. In turn, these attempts to overcome bias ironically leads to less favorable hiring outcomes because they violate expectations about how women are expected to self-present.

My findings show that individual efforts to overcome bias (i.e., by managing impressions of gender) are ineffective in closing the gender gap when the system presents a tricky double-bind that penalizes women’s behavior no matter what they do. This in turn inspired my dissertation work and a lot of my other ongoing work which focuses on how we can fix the “system” itself. Specifically, I incorporate Behavioral Insights/Nudges and organizational design principles to examine how organizations can make structural changes (i.e., changing the design of promotional processes and reframing language in job advertisements) to reduce the impact of biases in personnel selection processes. So generally, I would say I’m interested in investigating mechanisms for why gender inequality is perpetuated, but also how we can fix the problem!

You were awarded the Governor General’s Gold Medal in recognition of your academic excellence! The Governor General’s Award is the highest honours available to graduate students in Canada. Can you tell us a little bit about your research that was recognized for this tremendous accomplishment?

Yes! I was so surprised, grateful, and honored to receive this accolade! This was based on my dissertation research which is very in line with this idea of “how can we fix the system” thinking when it comes to gender inequality. In my dissertation, I argue that most promotions typically require self-nomination and entry into competition via an application. However, this “opt-in” process might result in fewer women choosing to compete because of gendered association with competition and self-promotion.

Drawing on Behavioral insights and the choice architecture literature, I proposed a simple, inexpensive, and effective solution using the concept of default bias: whether changing promotion schemes from a default where applicants must opt-in (i.e., self-nominate) to a default where applicants must opt-out (in which those who pass a qualification threshold are automatically considered for promotion, but can choose not to be considered) will attenuate gender differences in participation. In a series of lab and online experiments, I found that whereas we observe gender differences in participation in competitive selection processes (like promotions) under an opt-in scheme (up to as much as a 25% gap in the absence of performance differences between women and men), this gender gap is eliminated when the choice to compete is described using opt-out framing.

Fun fact — I was on the fence about applying to this highly prestigious award, but I took advice from my own decision to “opt-in”, and it paid off!

You have had a busy last year, moving from Toronto to Los Angeles to begin your position at UCLA Anderson and getting married! How was that experience moving across North America during a pandemic, and what are your impressions so far of living in Los Angeles?

It’s been a crazy couple of years with lots of huge life and career transitions! The move was intense because we had to make that choice to move there and to find a place to live without having any chance to see the city for ourselves in person, since at the time the US-Canada border was closed. But it’s proven to be an amazing choice — we love the sunny weather, amazing food, and beautiful campus. Except, maybe just the traffic, and I do miss the snow sometimes!

We spoke with Dr. Kroeper to learn more about her research and recent move to pursue an Assistant Professor position at Sacred Heart University…

What are you currently working on, or planning to work on, related to ESS research goals and activities?

I’m working on a few projects related to ESS goals, but there’s one that I’m especially excited about! With Steve Spencer, I’ve been developing and validating a new, easy-to-use self-report measure of social identity threat concerns. Some of you might remember, I presented an early version of this work at last year’s ESS meeting. Since then, we’ve collected a great deal more data (9 studies; N=5,763).

Let me start with some background. Social identity threat emerges in contexts where people expect to be devalued or mistreated because of their social identities (e.g., their gender, race). For example, a woman’s gender identity may be especially salient and socially meaningful to her in places where women are numerically underrepresented (like physics classrooms). She stands out in these settings, so it makes sense for her to worry about being stereotyped, marginalized, or disrespected due to her gender. As we all know, the ESS mission is to foster women’s inclusion and success in STEM. To understand, affirm, and improve the experiences of women (as well as the experiences of people of color, nonbinary and queer folx), it is critical to have valid and precise measures of social identity threat concerns. But surprisingly, there is no consensus self-report measure of identity threat.

So, my goal with the SITC Inventory has been to develop an easy-to-use, modifiable measure that captures identity-related concerns validly and precisely. Across all studies so far, the SITC Inventory demonstrates high internal consistency reliability, and it predicts theoretically meaningful outcomes, like context avoidance and distress. We’ve assessed identity threat concerns relevant to numerous social identities (e.g., gender, race, sexuality, nationality, class, political orientation) and social contexts (e.g., school, work, church, leisure settings). And we’ve used correlational and experimental methods, in both laboratory and field settings.

To me, this work is exciting and relevant to the ESS Consortium for a couple of reasons: Theoretically, having a valid, reliable social identity threat self-report measure furthers understanding of how contexts can influence people’s visceral experiences of their social identities. Practically speaking, this self-report measure could be leveraged in intervention research to identify and root out harmful and unfair norms, policies, and practices that perpetuate and compound social disadvantage. So, I have many high hopes for this line of work!

Is there an area(s) of study that interests you that you haven’t explored and would like to someday?

This is a great question. I’m a new-ish mom. My son is only 18 months old. As I’ve been navigating motherhood, I’ve become more and more interested in how people balance motherhood and career. Specifically, what are the mindsets and situational affordances that support a mother’s success in both these roles? If anyone else in the ESS is interested in this topic, please reach out. I’d love to collaborate.

You’ve had a busy couple of years, having a child and then moving from Columbus, Ohio to begin your position at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut! How was that experience moving to the northeast, and what are your impressions so far of living in Connecticut?

I’m from the northeast originally, so this most recent move was a return home! For the first time in 8 years, I’m within driving distance of my parents and it’s been great. I love seeing my son bond with his grandparents. And working at Sacred Heart has been a dream for me. I have great colleagues, with a lot of collaboration potential. They also care deeply about work-life balance. So, they support the whole me: my research, my teaching, and me as a person, beyond the work. I feel very lucky and grateful.