Devon Proudfoot is an Assistant Professor of Human Resource Studies at Cornell University’s ILR School. Professor Proudfoot’s current research focuses on gender issues in the workplace; she is particularly interested in understanding how gender stereotypes impact well-being and motivation at work as well as how people experience gender across different cultures. At Cornell, Professor Proudfoot teaches courses on Diversity and Inclusion at both the undergraduate and Master’s levels.
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Does Diversity Influence Creativity?
The Psychology and Science of Workplace Creative Outcomes
Wednesday, February 26, 2025, 1pm EST
Event Overview
How does team diversity influence perceptions of creativity? Despite mixed evidence on the direct relationship between demographic diversity and creative outcomes, people generally tend to believe that diverse teams are inherently more creative.
Join Devon Proudfoot from Cornell’s ILR School as we discuss her groundbreaking research on this "diversity heuristic" — a lay belief that demographic diversity enhances creativity — and its profound implications for organizations, team dynamics, and the evaluation of creative work.
Drawing on findings from studies involving over 5,500 participants, the discussion will cover key insights, including:
- Observers consistently perceive demographically diverse teams (in terms of race and gender) as more creative than homogeneous ones.
- Products attributed to diverse teams are judged as more creative, even if they may be identical to those of homogeneous teams.
- Manipulating perceptions of cognitive diversity can shift judgments of team creativity.
- There is evidence of a relationship between the proportion of racial minorities or women in a group and judgments of creativity.
This webinar is ideal for organizational leaders, HR professionals, diversity and inclusion advocates, creativity researchers, and anyone interested in understanding how beliefs about diversity shape workplace outcomes.
What You'll Learn
- The ways in which psychological mechanisms can drive the association between diversity and creativity
- How the diversity heuristic influences real-world judgments, including in competitive organizational settings
- Actionable strategies to align team composition with creativity assessments in professional contexts
Speakers
Devon Proudfoot
Assistant Professor of Human Resource Studies
Cornell ILR School
Assistant Professor of Human Resource Studies, Cornell ILR School
Sean Fath
Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior
Cornell ILR School
Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior, Cornell ILR School
Sean Fath is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at Cornell’s ILR School. Broadly, his research focuses on managerial decision making, bias reduction in social evaluations, and perceptions of social and organizational hierarchy. Before coming to Cornell, Professor Fath received his Ph.D. in Management and Organizations from Duke University.
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