Contrast Bias: Everything HR Professionals Must Know
91% of U.S. workers have experienced workplace discrimination. While such discrimination can manifest in different ways, it often involves some form of (unconscious) bias. As an HR professional, knowing how biased you are and how you can handle this issue is especially important.
Contrast effect bias (also simply called contrast bias), like any other type of workplace bias, profoundly impacts employees and organizations. It can hamper career advancement opportunities, lower job satisfaction and morale, negatively affect mental health, strain professional relationships, increase turnover rates, and dampen productivity.
For example, 39% of the respondents in a Deloitte survey reported experiencing bias at least once a month, while 68% said witnessing or experiencing bias harmed their productivity.
But what is contrast bias, how can it negatively impact your organization and its employees, and how can you prevent it in your workplace?
Contents
What is contrast bias?
Ingroup versus outgroup bias
The impact of contrast bias
5 areas of workplace contrast bias
7 ways to avoid contrast bias in the workplace
What is contrast bias?
Contrast bias is a form of cognitive bias in which you evaluate someone’s abilities, work performance, or characteristics by comparing them to others you’ve recently evaluated instead of using an objective standard or criteria.
This can happen in various contexts, such as recruitment, performance reviews, promotions, and day-to-day interactions among staff. As a result, there is either a positive contrast effect or negative contrast effect — you may view a candidate’s qualifications or employee’s performance as either better or worse than they really are, based on whom you compare them to.
The psychology behind contrast bias is quite simple: comparing one thing or person against another can make people feel more confident about their decisions. As HR professionals often have to make crucial decisions regarding candidates and employees, they may unconsciously or subconsciously rely on contrast bias to help them reach these decisions more quickly and efficiently.
Ingroup versus outgroup bias
Depending on the workplace situation, you may engage in ingroup or outgroup bias. The table below gives an overview of the main differences between the two and an example of each.
Ingroup bias
The tendency to favor people inside your own group
- Similar behavior
- Sense of belonging
- Herd mentality
- Sympathy
Someone refers an acquaintance for a job solely because they went to the same (prestigious) university
Outgroup bias
The tendency to dismiss or be resistant toward people outside your own group
- Different behavior
- Us versus them mentality
- Negative stereotypes about those in the outgroup
Sports fans may tolerate aggressive, antagonistic behavior from their favorite team but not from rival teams
The impact of contrast bias
Contrast bias typically has several negative implications for an organization. Here’s what these can look like at different stages of the employee life cycle:
- Skewed hiring decisions: Comparing candidates to one another instead of focusing on how well their skills and qualifications match a role’s requirements can skew hiring decisions. This will, in turn, negatively impact new hire diversity and potentially lead to work compatibility issues.
- Unfair performance management and reviews: Assessing employees by comparing them to one another instead of based on their individual achievements and performance results in unfair reviews and appraisals.
- Demotivated employees: When employees realize their supervisors are comparing them to one another instead of focusing on the quality of their work, they tend to start losing motivation.
- Compromised collaboration and cohesion: Employees who feel undervalued or marginalized are usually less inclined to collaborate effectively with their colleagues. This leads to a breakdown in team cohesion and overall performance.
- Biased promotion decisions: Management may decide which employees to promote based on how their personalities differ from their peers rather than their professional performance or how well they meet the company’s promotion policy requirements.
- Loss of trust in the organization: Employees and candidates aware of contrast bias in the company will likely lose trust in the fairness and integrity of its processes.
5 areas of workplace contrast bias
Contrast bias in recruitment
Let’s say you are a hiring manager interviewing two candidates for the same role. The first candidate is charismatic and well-spoken but inexperienced in certain aspects of the job. The second candidate comes across as slightly nervous and reserved, but their detailed answers indicate they are highly knowledgeable and qualified for the job. Despite this, you find yourself leaning towards the first candidate.
Let’s look at another example of contrast bias in recruitment: Aaron, Brenda, Chong, and Danusha are all being considered for a senior sales position. On day one, you speak with Aaron and Brenda and, based on their qualifications, decide Brenda is the most suitable candidate for the role.
On day two, you interview Chong and Danusha. Danusha is more qualified than Chong but less qualified than Brenda. However, because you most recently interviewed Danusha, and she outshone Chong, you offered her the job instead of Brenda — who is actually the most qualified of the four candidates.
Contrast bias in performance reviews
Imagine it’s time for your organization’s quarterly company-wide performance reviews. One of the salespeople has done unusually well, exceeding their sales targets and boosting the company’s profits.
Instead of assessing the rest of the team members’ performances based on pre-determined company-wide standards and their individual KPIs, their manager compares them to their top-performing colleagues. This unfairly pushes down their performance ratings and paints them in an unfavorable light.
A manager may also practice contrast bias on a personal level — let’s say they have two people on their team, Ashley and Raoul. Like the manager, Ashley has a horse and loves going on long horse rides on weekends, so they go together regularly. On the other hand, Raoul doesn’t know much about horses and is therefore not invited.
When it’s time to evaluate her team members’ work performance, the manager rates Ashley higher than they do Raoul. The problem is that they’ve based this on their personal relationship with Ashley instead of on each team member’s quality of work and KPI fulfillment. In this case, affinity bias is also a factor in the manager’s decision.
Contrast bias in teams
During team meetings, you will likely notice two main groups of people: those who don’t hesitate to share their opinions or answer questions during meetings and those who prefer to take notes and offer their opinions or suggestions in writing after meetings.
If, for instance, the team’s manager falls into the first group of people, they may feel inclined to pay more attention to that group and neglect the second group.
Contrast bias in leadership
Suppose there are two employees at a large international consulting firm who are up for a promotion. Both of them meet all the company’s requirements to be eligible for the promotion and are highly suitable for the role.
One of them, however, happened to have attended a more prestigious business school than the other did. The manager fixates on this detail and, after comparing the employees’ educational backgrounds, decides to promote the one who could afford the more prestigious school.
Contrast bias in learning and development
Imagine there are two candidates for additional learning and development (L&D) opportunities on the same team, Sheila and Samira. Sheila is usually attentive yet quiet during meetings, while Samira asks many questions and makes many comments. Both are equally competent, but as their manager unconsciously rates them based on their communication, she offers Samira the L&D opportunity.
Contrast bias can also manifest in the form of age-based discrimination. Picture Suzie, a floor manager at a large retail company who has successfully mentored people of all ages for many years. She recently mentored two assistant floor managers — 26-year-old Ali and 39-year-old Wendy.
Suzie had a positive experience mentoring both of them, but Ali was promoted shortly after finishing the mentorship program. This plays into her contrast bias, so the next time Suzie must choose an assistant floor manager to mentor, she opts for 25-year-old Mo instead of 42-year-old Patricia without first considering which of them is more qualified or competent.
HR tip
Make it easy for employees to flag and report situations where they encounter contrast bias. Clearly communicate their options for doing so (e.g., an anonymized email or a form they can access and submit via the company’s online HR system).
7 ways to avoid contrast bias in the workplace
1. Start with the HR team
Hire an external expert to train your organization’s HR team on bias awareness. You can also opt for self-paced online learning. As an HR professional, you must understand contrast bias and know how to detect and minimize it.
Once everyone is on the same page and knows how to identify contrast bias at work, you can create a plan to minimize bias, all the way from the hiring process to performance reviews.
2. Conduct awareness training
Minimizing the contrast effect bias starts with awareness and training. This applies not just to HR but also to all the company’s managers. In addition to an extensive initial training program, organize regular refresher training sessions to stamp out any potential bias along the way.
3. Conduct structured interviews
Adhere to a structured interview to avoid interviewer bias during the selection process. This means you must ask candidates a standardized set of questions, which will help remove bias from your company’s shortlisting and hiring decisions by ensuring it assesses job applicants based on the same criteria.
It will also enable you to compare candidates based on qualifications and experience and make the best decision based on this data.
4. Involve multiple evaluators
In your organization’s hiring and performance review processes, involve more than one person in the decision-making procedure. This will foster a system of checks and balances, thus reducing the likelihood and impact of any possible contrast bias.
5. Establish and adhere to a company standard
Develop objective criteria to evaluate employee performance and potential and ensure these criteria are communicated clearly and used consistently across the entire organization.
6. Foster an inclusive culture
Establish and maintain an inclusive environment at work to ensure your company values diversity, encourages employees to appreciate their colleagues’ unique contributions, and works to minimize bias throughout the organization.
7. Educate the workforce
Offer regular training or workshops on unconscious bias to continuously educate both employees and leadership on recognizing, addressing, and countering their biases.
HR tip
Make bias recognition, reduction, and removal a shared objective that everyone in the organization works toward. Share real-life success stories across the company to educate and encourage employees and management to continue rooting out bias in their day-to-day interactions.
Key takeaway
Contrast bias will occur to some extent in every organization, so don’t be alarmed if you detect it in your company. Detection is the first step in addressing, understanding, and ultimately, preventing or at least minimizing bias in the future.
The HR team should lead the company’s efforts to avoid contrast bias in the workplace as it is largely responsible for handling the entire employee lifecycle, from recruitment to resignation. HR professionals are the first organizational representatives candidates and new hires meet, and the last colleagues employees speak with when leaving a company. This makes their role in recognizing, reducing, and removing bias especially vital.
FAQ
Contrast effect bias is a phenomenon that distorts a person’s perception of someone based on an unconscious comparison with another person or other people. An example of contrast bias in the workplace is when a hiring manager assesses a job applicant — unconsciously or subconsciously — by comparing them with another applicant rather than on their own qualifications and competencies.
If, for instance, a recruiter compares Applicant A’s qualifications with Applicant B’s inferior qualifications, applicant A will seem better suited to the role and may progress further in the recruitment process. However, this does not mean they are the most suitable candidate for the job, something the recruiter may miss due to contrast bias.
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