Do We Prefer Coworkers Who are Better or Worse Than us? Evidence From The 'Weakest Link' Game

We propose that hierarchical organizations that use peer inputs to hire, reward or promote employees, present a dilemma to individuals. To increase group performance, which could in turn determine individual outcomes, one's peers should be better than oneself. But to increase the probability of getting ahead, one's peers should be worse than oneself. Individuals will have to tradeoff these conflicting motives when making judgments that will affect peers desires (and choices) to remain in the organization. Results from a television game where this dilemma is stark and involves large stakes, indicate that individuals make judgments that could potentially eliminate others who are substantially better or substantially worse performers than themselves. This tendency is moderated by the size of the reward pool and the strength of the player: individuals are more likely to vote out high (rather than low) performers as the size of the reward pool increases and low performers are more likely to vote to eliminate strong performers than strong performers are.