University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Anderson School of Management, Los Angeles, CA 90095.
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2022 Jul 19;119(29):e2121730119. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2121730119. Epub 2022 Jul 14.
Policymakers and business leaders often use peer comparison information-showing people how their behavior compares to that of their peers-to motivate a range of behaviors. Despite their widespread use, the potential impact of peer comparison interventions on recipients' well-being is largely unknown. We conducted a 5-mo field experiment involving 199 primary care physicians and 46,631 patients to examine the impact of a peer comparison intervention on physicians' job performance, job satisfaction, and burnout. We varied whether physicians received information about their preventive care performance compared to that of other physicians in the same health system. Our analyses reveal that our implementation of peer comparison did not significantly improve physicians' preventive care performance, but it did significantly decrease job satisfaction and increase burnout, with the effect on job satisfaction persisting for at least 4 mo after the intervention had been discontinued. Quantitative and qualitative evidence on the mechanisms underlying these unanticipated negative effects suggest that the intervention inadvertently signaled a lack of support from leadership. Consistent with this account, providing leaders with training on how to support physicians mitigated the negative effects on well-being. Our research uncovers a critical potential downside of peer comparison interventions, highlights the importance of evaluating the psychological costs of behavioral interventions, and points to how a complementary intervention-leadership support training-can mitigate these costs.
政策制定者和商业领袖经常使用同行比较信息——向人们展示他们的行为与同行的行为相比如何——来激励各种行为。尽管它们被广泛使用，但同行比较干预对接受者幸福感的潜在影响在很大程度上是未知的。我们进行了一项为期 5 个月的实地实验，涉及 199 名初级保健医生和 46631 名患者，以研究同行比较干预对医生工作表现、工作满意度和倦怠的影响。我们改变了医生是否收到有关其预防保健表现与同一医疗系统内其他医生相比的信息。我们的分析表明，我们实施的同行比较并没有显著提高医生的预防保健表现，但确实显著降低了工作满意度并增加了倦怠，这种对工作满意度的影响至少在干预停止后持续了 4 个月。关于这些意外负面影响的机制的定量和定性证据表明，干预无意中发出了领导层缺乏支持的信号。与这一说法一致的是，为领导者提供有关如何支持医生的培训减轻了对幸福感的负面影响。我们的研究揭示了同行比较干预的一个关键潜在缺点，强调了评估行为干预的心理成本的重要性，并指出了如何通过补充干预——领导力支持培训——来减轻这些成本。
