The More You Know: Knowledge‐Based Training Improves Attitudes Towards Breastfeeding Accommodations in the Workplace

ABSTRACT Federal legislation requires organizations to provide breastfeeding mothers with adequate breaks and proper locations to breastfeed or pump. Despite this legal requirement, many new mothers report inadequate opportunities to express milk. This study explored whether knowledge‐based trainings lead to more favorable attitudes towards these accommodations and whether empathy and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) would moderate these effects. Participants viewed either a knowledge‐based breastfeeding video or a more general training video promoting diversity. After a brief distractor task, participants then completed a knowledge posttest and an inbox task. In the inbox task, participants were asked to take on the role of a manager and respond to several scenarios, including two in which an employee requested accommodations to breastfeed. Participants who completed the breastfeeding training specifically were more likely to endorse the most accommodating response and less likely to choose the least accommodating (and potentially illegal) response in these tasks. The results show that a short, knowledge‐based video can improve people's attitudes towards breastfeeding accommodations compared to a more general diversity training. Further, empathy moderated these effects, but SDO did not. Results suggest that brief, targeted trainings promote more inclusive work environments than more general diversity training.