Gendered white lies: Women are given inflated performance feedback compared to men

Abstract

Are underperforming women given less truthful, but kinder performance feedback (“white lies”) compared to equally underperforming men? We test this hypothesis by using a “benchmark” of truthful (objective) evaluation of performance and then either manipulate (Study 1) or measure (Study 2) the extent to which the feedback given to women is upwardly distorted. In Study 1, participants were asked to guess the gender of an underperforming employee who had been given more or less truthful feedback. Participants overwhelmingly assumed that employees who had been told “white lies” were women. In Study 2, in a naturalistic feedback paradigm, participants first provided a quantitative evaluation of work in the absence of any gender information. After learning the worker’s gender, participants upwardly distorted their quantitative feedback and expressed more positive comments to women, but not men. The findings suggest that women may not receive the same quality of feedback as men.