Emerging trends toward greater pay transparency and more freedom in teaming decisions intersect to highlight a potential conflict. Extant research suggests that visible pay disparities should adversely affect collaborations, particularly with higher paid partners, but we challenge this thesis and present three preregistered studies demonstrating that visible salary disparities can positively affect collaboration with higher paid peers in teaming decisions. In Studies 1 and 2, people chose to collaborate with higher rather than lower paid peers unless explicitly told that their potential collaborators' knowledge, skills, abilities, and experience were similar, suggesting that pay was viewed as a signal for competence. In Study 3, the preference for working with higher paid peers was replicated even when the decision-makers were familiar with their potential coworkers. In contrast to teaming decisions, in a fourth preregistered study (Study 4) focused on hiring decisions, people were less likely to hire a candidate with a higher (vs. lower) pay history for a subordinate position on their team. Taken together, the studies demonstrate that visible pay disparities affect collaboration and selection decisions but in different ways: People tend to show a bias in favor of higher paid peers as collaboration partners, while they show an aversion to hiring people with higher pay histories as subordinates. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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向上（和向下）合作：检查人们何时以及为什么喜欢与高薪同事（和低薪下属）合作。


提高薪酬透明度和提高团队决策自由度的新兴趋势相互交叉，凸显了潜在的冲突。现有研究表明，明显的薪酬差异会对合作产生不利影响，尤其是与高薪合作伙伴的合作，但我们对这一论文提出质疑，并提出了三项预先注册的研究，证明明显的薪酬差异可以对与高薪同事在团队决策中的合作产生积极影响。在研究 1 和 2 中，人们选择与高薪同事合作，而不是与低薪同事合作，除非明确告知潜在合作者的知识、技能、能力和经验相似，这表明薪酬被视为能力的信号。在研究 3 中，即使决策者熟悉他们的潜在同事，也重复了与高薪同事合作的偏好。与团队决策相反，在第四项关注招聘决策的预先注册研究（研究 4）中，人们不太可能雇用具有较高（与较低）薪酬历史的候选人担任团队中的下属职位。总而言之，这些研究表明，明显的薪酬差异会影响协作和选择决策，但影响方式不同：人们往往倾向于选择薪酬较高的同事作为合作伙伴，而不愿意雇用具有较高薪酬历史的人作为下属。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。