When people knew about the bias, they were less willing to work, a finding that was true even among higher-paid participants. People were more likely to refuse to work in an unfair scenario, even if their refusal had no impact on other people's compensation.
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When employees aren’t compensated equally for their efforts, it reduces everyone’s motivation — even people who stand to benefit from the disparity, according to a new study by the University College London (UCL), published in PLOS One.
“Here we have shown the psychological impacts of inequality of opportunity, and how it can hurt the productivity and well-being of everyone involved,” lead author Dr. Filip Gesiarz of UCL’s Psychology and Language Sciences department said in a statement.
“Our findings may shed light on how psychological mechanisms, apart from structural barriers, can contribute to higher unemployment and lower university application rates of people from disadvantaged backgrounds. It’s more difficult to motivate yourself to work hard if you know that other people will be more generously rewarded for the same effort.”
For the paper, 810 participants completed a simple task in exchange for money. In some instances, researchers told them others were being paid more or less for the same work with varying degrees of inequality.
When people knew about the bias, they were less willing to work, a finding that was true even among higher-paid participants. People were more likely to refuse to work in an unfair scenario, even if their refusal had no impact on other people’s compensation.
“This study documents yet another example of a ‘poverty trap’: a situation in which being put at a disadvantage by random circumstances decreases a person’s motivation to work, further worsening their situation,” Co-author Dr. Jan-Emmanuel De Neve from the University of Oxford said.
The paper provides a breakdown of the participants’ age (with a mean age of 26.2), gender (60 per cent identifying as female and 40 per cent identifying as male), and political orientation (with the average participant identifying as moderately political). It does not disclose the participant’s race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability status.
This information could prove useful, as individuals with intersecting identities are routinely victimized by inequality, particularly when it comes to compensation.
Approximately 15 per cent of the global population, for example, lives with some form of disability. And while a large portion of this group can work, it remains an underemployed segment.
In the European Union, about 60 per cent of disabled people are employed, compared to 82 per cent of the general population, according to the World Economic Forum.
Workers with disabilities tend to earn less than their non-disabled colleagues. There are a variety of reasons for this, but one can be attributed to employer reluctance to create more accommodating spaces. This can prevent disabled employees from taking part in career-building workshops, training sessions, and travel opportunities.
And research has shown individuals with racially distinct names are less likely to land job interviews, regardless of skill. A recent study in Sweden focusing on Trans job applicants of all races reached a similar conclusion. According to the Swedish study cis-gendered job seekers — i.e., people who identify with the gender assigned at birth — are 18 per to receive a positive response from an employer, compared to a Trans applicant.
Researchers aren’t sure if the findings from the UCL paper will hold outside of the lab.
In the real world, there are other factors at play that could make the results different.
“In the ‘real world’ people many times assume that their good fortune is justified by their talent and effort and therefore inequality might not have a negative influence on the motivation and well-being of privileged individuals in those situations,” Senior author Professor Tali Sharot of UCL Psychology & Language Sciences said in a statement.
“This is an important question that we hope to answer in the future.”
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