Workplace discrimination: A meta‐analytic extension,critique, and future research agenda

Despite a large and growing literature on workplace discrimination, there has been a myopic focus on the direct relationships between discrimination and a common set of outcomes. The aim of this meta‐analytic review was both to challenge and advance current understanding of workplace discrimination and its associations with outcomes by identifying the pathways through which discrimination affects outcomes, examining boundary conditions to explain when discrimination is most harmful for employees, and exploring a potential third variable explanation for discrimination–outcome relationships. Mediation tests indicated that workplace discrimination is associated with employee outcomes through both job stress and justice. Moderator analyses showed that discrimination appears to be most detrimental when it is observed rather than personally experienced, interpersonal rather than formal, and measured broadly rather than specifically. We also found that discrimination–outcome relationships differ across work and nonwork contexts and as a function of the social identity targeted by discrimination. Discrimination generally explained meaningful incremental variance in outcomes after controlling for the effects of negative affectivity, but the relationships between discrimination and health were substantially decreased. We conclude by offering a constructive critique of the empirical discrimination literature and by detailing an agenda for future research.