Missing the target: Evaluating the ironic consequences of identity-targeted recruitment advertisements on Black Americans' anticipated tokenism and organizational identity safety.
Journal Article
Overview
abstract
In light of Black Americans' persistent underrepresentation in organizations, many organizations have pledged to increase their targeted recruitment of Black employees. However, the efficacy of using identity-targeted appeals as a strategy to recruit Black employees has yet to be tested empirically. Although targeted appeals are expected to foster engagement among intended recipients, perceiving that one is being sought after due to their group membership may activate recipients' concerns about being tokenized-feeling hypervisible and scrutinized as a minority within the organization-subsequently reducing perceptions that one's ingroup is valued (i.e., identity safety). To assess this possibility, the current research investigated whether Black Americans exhibit negative responses to identity-targeted recruitment advertisements, the mechanism underlying their responses, and whether various diversity cues effectively mitigate negative responses. Across five online experiments, Black Americans recruited from Prolific (N = 1,505) imagined that they were applying for a position at a fictional company and saw a targeted recruitment advertisement (which made a direct appeal to recruit Black Americans or racial minorities broadly) or a control advertisement. Findings demonstrated that viewing a targeted (vs. control) advertisement increased concerns about tokenization and reduced anticipated identity safety at the organization, and tokenism served as a mechanism underlying lower levels of anticipated identity safety. Notably, using multiple diversity cues in conjunction with the targeted advertisement significantly reduced concerns about tokenism relative to a targeted advertisement without these cues, but did not fully ameliorate this effect. Therefore, despite research endorsing the use of identity-targeted recruitment strategies, targeting marginalized identities may, ironically, impede recruitment efforts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
