Diversity Exercise: Am I Right?

Purpose

In this entertaining activity, delegates get to evaluate each other based on predispositions and assumptions. You can use the exercise for training on diversity and political correctness. It is run in a form of a competition to make it both more exciting and also to examine people’s decision making under pressure.

Objective

Assign each attribute in the table to someone in the class and complete the table as quickly as possible.

What You Need

• A copy of the “Attributes Form” provided below for each delegate
• Prize for the winner

Setup

• Distribute the “Attributes Form” to all delegates.
• Explain that on your mark, delegates must start going around to others and interview them to find who has a particular attribute listed in the form.
• They should make a record of the name of the person who has the attribute in their forms.
• The person who completes his form sooner than everyone else wins the competition.
• Naturally, since this is a competition, delegates should avoid sharing their findings with each other. Hence, this comes down to guessing who might have a particular attribute before approaching to confirm the assumption in a quick interview. The quick decision making will lead to stereotyping which can be examined in this exercise and explored in a course such as diversity management.
• Give the prize to the winner.
• Follow with a discussion.

Timing

Explaining the Exercise: 2 minutes

Activity: 15 minutes

Group Feedback: 10 minutes

Discussion

What did you do to complete your table faster? Were you stereotyping? Were you successful at it? Did you make many bad assumptions? What does this suggest about preconceptions for other people? What happens to your sense of political correctness when you are under pressure?

Variations

You can change the set of attributes or add more sets to bias the exercise based on your needs.

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Personality