When Your Co‐Worker Is a Robot: Intergroup Performance Status and Its Consequences for Workplace Attitudes

Abstract

ABSTRACT Perceiving robots as outperforming humans in the workplace can be particularly damaging to employees’ workplace attitudes (e.g., organizational commitment and job satisfaction) because they create intergroup comparisons of performance status. We conducted five experiments with college students and working adults, using both scenario‐based designs and simulated work environments to test this idea. Participants’ perception of lower performance status than robots led to greater realistic threat to job security, which further lower workplace attitudes. Robots’ humanlike features did not moderate these effects. Using a benchmark as the comparison target had no significant effect on perceived threat or workplace attitudes, suggesting that the social comparison process—not low performance status itself—drives these effects. Comparisons with robots revealed both parallels and distinctions from comparisons with humans. Team‐based incentive policy, as an intervention, reduced the negative effects on workplace attitudes but not on realistic threats, compensating for rather than mitigated robot threat.