DEI programs purport to cultivate inclusive environments for people from diverse backgrounds and encourage greater empathy in interpersonal interactions. A key component of DEI offerings lies in diversity pedagogy: Lectures, trainings and educational resources ostensibly designed to educate participants about their prejudice and bias in order to eliminate discrimination. As institutions across corporate and educational sectors increasingly embed DEI into their foundational strategies, it is crucial to evaluate the effectiveness of common aspects of this pedagogy.

Across all groupings, instead of reducing bias, [we found that] they engendered a hostile attribution bias, amplifying perceptions of prejudicial hostility where none was present, and punitive responses to the imaginary prejudice. These results highlight the complex and often counterproductive impacts of pedagogical elements and themes prevalent in mainstream DEI training.