The Conversation

Watch Out for That Quiet Coworker in the Next Cubicle: How Working With Introverts Can Hurt Your Career

Are you one of the more outgoing members of your team at work? According to two new studies, you might want to tone it down near quieter coworkers if your company participates in peer reviews. Researchers at Oregon State University, the University of Florida, and the University of Notre Dame found that introverted employees are more likely to give low evaluations to their extroverted colleagues—potentially affecting their coworkers' chances of receiving a raise, promotion, or bonus. The studies, which will be published in the Academy of Management Journal, found that introverts tend to rate their more outgoing coworkers as underperforming and are less willing to give them credit or praise. "The magnitude with which introverts underrated performance of extroverts was surprising," said Keith Leavitt, an assistant professor in OSU's College of Business and a coauthor, in a news release. "The results were very consistent across both studies." In one of the studies, 178 MBA students were put into small teams for a semester and asked to evaluate their teammates halfway through the term. After examining the submitted questionnaires, researchers found that introverts were more likely to give other introverts positive reviews. Meanwhile, extroverts showed no favoritism between the two personality

Are you one of the more outgoing members of your team at work? According to two new studies, you might want to tone it down near quieter coworkers if your company participates in peer reviews. Researchers at Oregon State University, the University of Florida, and the University of Notre Dame found that introverted employees are more likely to give low evaluations to their extroverted colleagues—potentially affecting their coworkers' chances of receiving a raise, promotion, or bonus.

The studies, which will be published in the Academy of Management Journal, found that introverts tend to rate their more outgoing coworkers as underperforming and are less willing to give them credit or praise. "The magnitude with which introverts underrated performance of extroverts was surprising," said Keith Leavitt, an assistant professor in OSU's College of Business and a coauthor, in a news release. "The results were very consistent across both studies."

In one of the studies, 178 MBA students were put into small teams for a semester and asked to evaluate their teammates halfway through the term. After examining the submitted questionnaires, researchers found that introverts were more likely to give other introverts positive reviews. Meanwhile, extroverts showed no favoritism between the two personality types.

"We found that introverted employees are especially sensitive to their coworkers' interpersonal traits, in particular extraversion and disagreeableness," Leavitt said. "They make judgments and evaluate performance of others with those traits in mind."

In the second study, students in a management program were asked to play an online game with three "teammates" who were actually controlled by the researchers (unbeknownst to the participant.) At the end of the 10-minute game, participants were asked to evaluate the team members—one of whom had purposefully been manipulated to behave like an extrovert through his online comments. In their evaluations, introverts gave lower evaluations to the extroverted player, despite the fact that all three teammates performed at the same level. Similar to the first study, extraverted participants did not show favoritism toward other extroverts.

Of course, that's just a game. And if you work at a company with a more top-down approach to annual reviews, your coworkers' perceptions of your performance may not matter much in the long run. But for employees at companies like Google, where peer reviews are reportedly a standard part of employees' annual assessments, colleagues' ratings and remarks could have an impact on career growth. This evaluation process "gives employees a tremendous amount of power to influence their peers' career opportunities," said Leavitt. "It's something individuals and employers should be aware of."

The studies are not the first to suggest that introverts may have a leg up in the workplace: In a paper published in 2013 titled "The Downfall of Extroverts and Rise of Neurotics," Corinne Bendersky, an associate professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, and her coauthor, Neha Parikh Shah, an assistant professor at Rutgers Business School, shared their research showing that extroverts tend not to live up to group expectations. Quieter, tenser team members, on the other hand, proved to be more motivated to impress team members and, as a result, exceeded expectations.

"The core of extroversion is wanting to be the center of attention," Bendersky said in a release about the study. "[Initially], there's a very strong, intuitive assumption by others that the enthusiasm, outgoingness and assertiveness of extroverts is associated with being very strong, positive contributors to tasks at work. But extroverts like to talk more than to listen. They're not particularly receptive to other people's input. While they really excel at tasks where they get all the credit, in interactive, collaborative settings, their peers start out with high expectations for them and end up disappointed."

Of course, we all know extroverts who are solid team players—but the studies are interesting nonetheless. What do you think of the findings? Do you think personality affects how you perceive your coworkers and their contributions at work? Share in the comments!