One in seven workers will pay to avoid seeing how colleagues perform — and forcing them to look hurts productivity

A real-world experiment with 793 workers found that people have wildly different preferences for peer performance information: some want it, some actively avoid it, and some only want it under certain conditions. When companies force a uniform feedback policy on everyone, they lose productivity from the people who hate the comparison — but tailoring when and how workers see peer data recovers that loss.

For decades, management assumed peer feedback was universally motivating. This paper shows the assumption is wrong. About 15% of workers experience peer information as pure stress with no productivity benefit, and forcing it on them actually suppresses effort. This matters because most companies still use one-size-fits-all feedback systems. The structural implication is simple: companies that let workers control the timing and visibility of peer comparisons will see higher productivity from the workers who hate it and no loss from the ones who benefit. The measurement here is concrete — tailoring increased overall welfare by up to 48% in this sample.