Prior research suggests that individuals react negatively when they perceive they are underpaid. Moreover, individuals frequently select pay referents who share their race and gender, suggesting that demographic similarity affects one’s knowledge of pay differences. Leveraging these insights, the authors examine whether the gender and racial composition of a work unit shapes individuals’ reactions to pay deprivation. Using field data from a large health care organization, they find that pay deprivation resulting from workers receiving less pay than their same-sex and same-race coworkers prompts a significantly stronger response than does pay deprivation arising from workers receiving less pay than their demographically dissimilar colleagues. A supplemental experiment reveals that this relationship likely results from individuals’ propensity to select same-category others as pay referents, shaping workers’ information about their colleagues’ pay. The study’s findings underscore the need to theoretically and empirically account for how demographically driven social comparison processes affect reactions to pay inequality.

先前的研究表明，当人们认为自己的报酬不足时，他们会做出负面反应。此外，个人经常选择具有相同种族和性别的薪酬推荐人，这表明人口统计学的相似性会影响人们对薪酬差异的了解。利用这些见解，作者检查了工作单位的性别和种族组成是否会影响个人对剥夺工资的反应。他们使用大型卫生保健组织的实地数据发现，与同性和同族同事的工资相比，工人的薪水减少导致的工资剥夺，其反应比工资与人口统计学上不同的工人的薪资剥夺引起的剥夺工资的反应要强得多。同事。一项补充实验表明，这种关系很可能是由于个人倾向于选择同一类别的其他人作为薪酬对象，从而影响了工人有关其同事薪酬的信息。这项研究的结果强调，有必要在理论和经验上解释人口统计学驱动的社会比较过程如何影响对薪酬不平等的反应。