The Unanticipated Consequences of Hiring Favorites

We investigate how an individual’s favorable perception of a colleague who was hired based on the individual’s referral drives deference to the colleague’s opinions. Through three experiments with 603 employed adults, we found that the heightened likability toward referral hires led referrers to overestimate the referral hires’ competence. As a result of the inflated competence perceptions, namely the competence perception bias, referrers were more likely to compromise with referral hires than with other hires. Whereas prior research has consistently highlighted the benefits of referral hiring, our findings demonstrate that post-hire interactions between employees and their referred workers can instead stifle healthy disagreement. Overall, our findings extend the field’s understanding of referral hiring by exploring referrers’ post-hire outcomes.