Social Comparisons and Deception Across Workplace Hierarchies: Field and Experimental Evidence

We examine how unfavorable social comparisons differentially spur employees of varying hierarchical levels to engage in deception. Drawing on literatures in social psychology and workplace self-esteem, we theorize that negative comparisons cause senior employees to seek to improve reported relative performance measures via deception. In a first study, we use deceptive self-downloads on the Social Science Research Network, the leading working paper repository in the social sciences, to show that employees higher in a hierarchy are more likely to engage in deception, particularly when the employee has enjoyed a high level of past success. In a second study, we confirm this finding in two scenario-based experiments. Our results suggest that longer-tenured and more successful employees face a greater loss of self-esteem from negative social comparisons, and they are more likely engage in deception in response to reported performance that is lower than that of peers.