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If you know your boss is biased against people like you, you’ll have less incentive to work hard. Similarly, if your boss is biased in favor of people like you, you’ll probably get promoted anyway. So, why work hard?
To demonstrate this, we placed nearly 1,200 research participants in several experiments designed to mimic work settings, where they and other “workers” made decisions about how much effort to dedicate to a task. In some experiments, we had participants complete number searches – by counting how many times “3” appeared in a large table of numbers, for example. Participants, working in pairs or in small groups, were told that their manager would award a bonus to one person based on how many number searches the workers completed.
Having a biased manager lowers productivity across the board – even for workers who aren’t targeted.