Affirmative Action as Help: A Review of Recipient Reactions to Preferential Selection and Affirmative Action

We review research on four areas of recipient reactions to affirmative action: (a) self-evaluations of ability and Performance, (b) motivation and task interest, (c) performance and achievement, and (d) evaluations of selection procedures. Not surprisingly, the process by which affirmative action was implemented strongly affected the findings. Self-evaluations of ability and specific components of performance were adversely affected when selection procedures did not provide unambiguous, explicit, and focused evidence of recipient qualifications. In contrast, measures of motivation were largely unaffected by any type of selection, although task choice was adversely affected when the selection process did not provide clear evidence of recipient qualifications. Task performance was complexly affected by selection process and other contextual variables. Finally, selection procedures that did not provide unambiguous, explicit, and focused evidence of qualifications were regarded by recipients as less fair than procedures that did not provide evidence of competencies. We interpret the literature using a model of affirmative action as help (Turner, Pratkanis, & Hardaway, 1991), draw further parallels to research on recipient reactions to aid, and develop strategies for the effective management of affirmative action programs. Affirmative action is the most important antidiscrimination technique ever instituted in the United States. It is the one tool that has had a demonstrable effect on discrimination. No one who knows anything about the subject would say it hasn't worked. It has certainly done something or it wouldn't have provoked so much opposition. (Eleanor Holmes Norton, quoted in Villarosa, 1990, p. 66) Because so many people seem to assume that the beneficiaries of affirmative action programs are necessarily bound for failure, or at least for inferiority, there is an understandable tendency . . . to resist being thought of as beneficiaries. After all, who wants to be bound for failure? (Carter, 1991, p. 21) Affirmative action provides a positive mind-set for minorities. The U.S. government is saying it is legal and right for young blacks to believe in themselves. Strong affirmative action procedures truly are significant in raising the self-esteem and self-confidence of dispossessed minorities (Madkins, 1989, p. 29) The effects of preferential treatment - the lowering of normal standards to increase black representation-puts blacks at war with an expanded realm of debilitating doubt, so that the doubt itself becomes an unrecognized preoccupation that undermines their ability to perform, especially in integrated contexts. . . . Preferential treatment, no matter how justified in the light of day, subjects blacks to a midnight of self-doubt, and so often transforms their advantage into a revolving door. (S. Steele, 1990, pp. 117-118)