How well-meaning allies can increase stress for marginalized people

ITHACA, N.Y. – Someone in the office makes a racially insensitive comment, and a white co-worker asks a Black colleague to help correct the offender.

In three studies, a Cornell University researcher found that this kind of maneuver can backfire. In such scenarios, the marginalized person then views the person who asked for their help less favorably – and is less likely to want to associate with them in the future.

“A marginalized person’s willingness to get involved in confronting prejudice is much more complicated than simply just trying to reduce prejudice in the workplace,” said Merrick Osborne, professor of organizational behavior at Cornell University. “Oftentimes it is asking them to do work, and it can put a burden on them. We find that, for marginalized people, being asked by an ally to speak up against a prejudice confrontation is more emotionally burdensome than not being asked. In turn, that shapes how the ally is viewed.”

Osborne is a co-author of “A (Costly) Penny for Your Thoughts? Allies Cause Harm by Seeking Marginalized Group Members’ Help When Confronting Prejudice.”.

In the early days of the Black Lives Matter and other movements, Osborne noticed that members of marginalized groups were being called on to comment about sensitive issues – such as the police killing of Breonna Taylor in March 2020 – just because of their membership in the group, and not because of any particular expertise.

“I thought that was really interesting,” Osborne said. “We social scientists haven’t fully unpacked how marginalized people experience addressing prejudice within the workplace, and there’s an assumption that marginalized folks have more knowledge about prejudice and how to reduce it.

Osborne and his team devised three studies involving nearly 1,500 participants. In study 1, participants described an act of workplace prejudice (either sexism or racism) and evaluated an ally co-worker who either hypothetically sought or did not seek their help while confronting it. Study 2 tested the effects of ally help-seeking in various scenarios, including invoking the name of the marginalized person but not directly seeking their help; study 3 examined how women responded to an ally’s help-seeking when the perpetrator was either present or absent.

Across all three studies, the researchers consistently found that when allies directly asked a marginalized person for help during a prejudice confrontation, marginalized group members reported more emotional burden than when no help was sought.

“We need to think of allyship in terms of how it’s helping the people who we’re being allies to,” he said, “and one of the ways that we have encouraged allyship in the past has been creating space for the marginalized person. But there are times when that might be not necessary.”

For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.

Cornell University has dedicated television and audio studios available for media interviews.

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