Comparison Kills Performance, Employee's Willingness To Do What's Best For The Company, and How To Stay On Task

Cognicent | 15 December, 2025 | Newsletter

Welcome to the December edition of our Insight Articles!

In this edition we explore the unhelpful art of comparison, the leadership and cultural influences on company-first decision making, and the subtle way we can take control of our attention when we start to lose focus.

We often, as humans, have a tendency to compare ourselves to others. From “beauty” to sport, to our professional and family life, comparison seems to be a shared experience by many. While we probably know it’s unhelpful, what does it do to our performance? Well, researchers out of Ohio state University sought to answer this question. Studying 690 college students completing a chemistry unit, they looked at what happened to performance when students compared their efforts to others.  

They found:

Both men and women tended to interpret putting in higher effort as a sign of lower competence, that is, I need to work harder to make up for a lack of ability

For female students, however, when they believed they worked hard because that is what’s required to learn and understand, without comparing themselves to others, they tended to do better in class and viewed themselves as more competent.

Although, for males, their perception of working hard did not impact their views about competence. This was impacted more significantly by their actual performance

Generally speaking, students believing they had worked hard (because that’s what was required to learn and understand) were linked with greater performance and higher perceptions of competence, while students who compared their efforts to others were linked with lower performance

Consider:

Do you compare your own efforts to the efforts of others, either at work or any other areas in life?

What about your people, do you ever influence them to compare their efforts to others by what you say, do or make important? Even if unintentionally

Article Reference:

Hyewon Lee, Shirley L. Yu, Tzu-Jung Lin, Minjung Kim. “Am I trying hard or harder than others?”: Gender differences in reciprocal relations between perceived effort, science self-concept, and achievement in chemistry. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 2025; 80: 102349 DOI: 10.1016/j.cedpsych.2025.102349

You’ve likely heard of phrases such as “cover your ass” being thrown around the workplace to describe behaviours that align with self-preservation. In essence, it’s about decision making that is done in the best interests of the individual rather than necessarily the organisation. Researchers studied employees in a large organisation, finding that the likelihood of people making what they call “defensive decisions” (making a choice that’s personally safer) is influenced by a number of factors.

Researchers found:

The presence of either Psychological safety (being able to challenge, raise concerns, disagree etc without fear of repercussions) or Authentic leadership (leaders demonstrating integrity, responsibility, self-awareness and are values-led) were linked with reduced defensive decisions

Both Psychological safety and Authentic leadership didn’t need to be present in a workplace, only one was sufficient

When psychological safety was low, defensive decisions increased

When authentic leadership was low, defensive decisions also increased

When asked the potential financial cost of their top 10 defensive decisions in the last 12 months, participants estimated that it came at a 30% decrease when compared to making a decision in line with the best interest of the company

About 10.8% of revenue was estimated to be lost due to defensive-decisions (on $100m revenue, that’s $10.8m shortfall)

Consider:

Within your team, do people feel safe enough to speak up, share ideas, challenge and disagree? How do you know?

Thinking of your leadership style, do you consistently do what you say you’ll do, demonstrate self-awareness and take responsibility for your actions?

Article Reference:

Artinger, F. M., Marx-Fleck, S., Junker, N. M., Gigerenzer, G., Artinger, S., & van Dick, R. (2025). Coping with uncertainty: The interaction of psychological safety and authentic leadership in their effects on defensive decision making. Journal of Business Research, 190, 115240.

Have you ever had the experience where you’re doing a task and it almost feels effortless to go off track. Either through procrastination, day dreaming or opting out of the task altogether? You’re not alone, and while there is plenty of science which supports the idea that our attentional capacity is limited, there has also been research into mechanisms for helping us stay on task, even if the task is boring or monotonous. A study out of the University of Texas took 100 people and got them to engage in a reaction time task over a 25minute period to explore the effects of drifting attention on reaction speed. 

The research found:

As expected, when left to their own devices, reaction time of participants across approximately 200 trials gradually got worse as the trials went on

However, when target times/goals were set for participants (e.g. react in under 450milliseconds) they did not show this worsening effect

Gradual increases in difficulty of target times also saw sustained focus on the tasks across the 200 trials (e.g. 450 milliseconds, then 400, then 350)

The suggestion here is that even on boring or monotonous tasks, setting goals for those tasks can protect against drifting attention.

Consider:

What are the tasks that you or your people do where drifting attention may be a risk factor? (often routine or ‘boring’ tasks)

How might you set some safe and productive goals for those tasks to enable greater levels of focus during their completion? What would this look like?

Article Reference:

Strayer, D. L., Robison, M. K., & Unsworth, N. (2024). Effects of goal-setting on sustained attention and attention lapses. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 86(5), 1594-1608.

We hope that you have a safe, well and productive rest of your week.

– The Cognicent Team