Diversity can be difficult to talk about, causing anxiety and conflict even in the U.S., where the conversation is more advanced. The Supreme Court cannot agree on diversity’s strong points or how to accomplish it. Companies value diversity but still face lawsuits for being too white, and leadership in the business world is still mainly white and male. 

What good does diversity do for us? The benefits of different expertise are obvious, but what about social diversity, the diversity of race, ethnicity and gender? Research has shown that social diversity in a group can make people uncomfortable and awkward. They lack trust and sense more interpersonal conflicts as well as many other problems. So what is the upside?

The fact is that if you want to build teams or organizations capable of innovating, you need diversity. Diversity enhances creativity and encourages the search for new information and points of view, leading to better decisions and problem-solving. Diversity can help companies earn more and lead to new discoveries and ideas. This conclusion comes from decades of research from leading experts such as psychologists, sociologists and many others.

Informational Diversity Helps Organizations

To understand the positives of diversity, one must understand informational diversity, which is when people bring different points of view and knowledge to group problem solving. People who are different from one another bring unique information and experiences. A male and a female engineer might look at things as differently as an engineer and a physicist. That is a good thing.

Research on large, innovative organizations has shown that informational diversity is positive. For example, two business professors studied the effect of gender diversity, or having more women present, on the top management teams of companies. They found that companies with more women in top management meant an increase in value for the businesses and the companies' ability to come up with new ideas and methods.

Racial diversity can deliver the same kinds of benefits. For example, several management professors looked at the heads of 177 U.S. banks in 2003. They found that for innovation-focused banks, increases in racial diversity in leadership meant better financial performance.

One problem with studies of large groups is that they only show that diversity happens alongside better performance, not that it causes better performance. Research on racial diversity in small groups, however, makes it possible to make some casual connections.

Diverse Groups Share More Information

In 2006, several prominent professors and I decided to study the impact of racial diversity on small groups. In order to succeed, their subjects needed to be good at sharing information. They were put in three-person groups, some all-white, others with two whites and one nonwhite, and asked to perform a murder mystery exercise. All group members had the same common information, but each member also had information that only he or she knew. To find out who committed the murder, the group members needed to share all their information. The groups with racial diversity did noticeably better than the groups with no racial diversity. This might be because being with similar people leads us to think we all hold the same information and ideas, which stopped the all-white groups from sharing information effectively.

This effect is not limited to race. For example, last year a study was done where participants were asked what political party, Democrat or Republican, they belonged to. Then, they had to read a murder mystery and write an essay about who they thought committed the crime. Afterward, they all were told that they needed to convince a person that they disagreed with of their own point of view. Half were told to make their case to a member of the opposing political party. The other half were told to make a case to a member of their own party.

Democrats were more prepared to talk to a Republican than a fellow Democrat, and Republicans showed the same pattern. When disagreement comes from a socially different person, we work harder.

Diversity Causes People To Work Harder

Diversity is not only about bringing different ideas and feelings to the table. Simply adding social diversity to a group makes people believe that differences of point of view might exist among them, and that belief makes people change their behavior.

Members of a group of people who are the same think they will agree with one another, that they will understand one another's perspectives and point of view, and that they will be able to easily come to an agreement. But when members of a group notice they are socially different from one another, they change their expectations and anticipate differences of opinion and point of view. They assume they will need to work harder to find common ground. This logic helps to explain both the upside and the downside of social diversity.

People work harder in diverse environments both socially and in how their brains function. They might not like it, but the hard work can lead to better outcomes.

Imagine you are writing a section of a paper for a presentation. You expect some disagreement and difficulty communicating because your collaborator is American and you are Chinese. Chances are, you will work harder on explaining your thinking and anticipating alternatives.

Diversity works by promoting hard work and creativity and by encouraging the consideration of alternatives even before any interpersonal communication takes place. We need diversity, in teams, organizations and society as a whole, if we are to change, grow and innovate.