Toward a psychological ecology of affirmative action

Research-based knowledge of the effects of affirmative action has been little help to policy makers. That is the case because there has been no means through which to organize into a policy-relevant whole the findings that have come from a variety of disciplinary sources. A heuristic schematic of the psychological ecology of affirmative action is proposed as a step toward developing a conceptual framework that can reduce this problem. A psychological ecology of affirmative action consists of the mutual relations between policy interest groups and the procedures used to implement these policies. A critical point that the ecological framework leads to is that the nature of affirmative action procedures has a major influence on the material and subjective links between interest groups. Given that claim, the schematic is used to categorize, review, and critique the multidisciplinary research on affirmative action. From that overview, a set of general guidelines for the design of effective affirmative action programs is proposed. Finally, a call is made for a shift in the unit of policy analysis from a focus on group justice to relational justice.