I’ve written before about the difficulties created when we force ourselves to act in a different way than our values would like in the workplace.  Such a divergence between our personal values and those of our employer can cause a great deal of distress.  These previous studies have focused on divergence in the ‘mission’ of employees and their employer, but of course, things can go much deeper than that.  Just how much was highlighted by a recent study led by Rice University.

The meta-analysis examines 65 studies to focus on what happens to employees when they disclose an identity that is stigmatized at work.  The authors suggest these include things such as sexual orientation and mental illness, but even includes pregnancy or physical disabilities.

Disclosing this identity can have various positive and negative consequences.  For instance, those people with non-visible stigmas, such as regarding their sexual orientation, were happier when they lived openly at work, with this translating into higher productivity.  It also tended to result in lower job anxiety, higher job satisfaction and greater commitment to their role.  Indeed, the benefits even showed outside of work with higher life satisfaction and lower psychological stress reported.

Not entirely positive

This didn’t appear to be the case for those with visible traits, such as race, gender or physical disabilities however.

“Identities that are immediately observable operate differently than those that are concealable,” the authors explain. “The same kinds of difficult decisions about whether or not to disclose the identity — not to mention the questions of to whom, how, when and where to disclose those identities — are probably less central to their psychological experiences.”

The authors believe this is largely because people value getting new information about others, therefore the outward expression of clearly visible stigmas is going to have less of an impact.

“Also, people react negatively to those who express or call attention to stigmas that are clearly visible to others, such as race or gender, as this may be seen as a form of advocacy or heightened pride in one’s identity,” they say.

Suffice to say, more work is needed before to firm a conclusion is drawn, but the researchers nonetheless hope that their work goes some way to improving our understanding of identities and their impact on the workplace.