Consider a hiring manager tasked with hiring an employee to fill a vacant position. The hiring manager is down to two candidates who are virtually identical with respect to their relevant job skills. The only difference is that Candidate A has worked very hard to develop their skills, while Candidate B possesses those abilities innately.
Who will the hiring manager choose?
The Hiring Manager’s Dilemma
Because both employees have the same relevant skills, it shouldn’t really matter whether those skills came from hard work or the luck of the draw, should it? If anything, one might expect the hiring manager to prefer the candidate who has worked hard to develop their skill set over the one who was simply fortunate.
In fact, some experts believe the opposite is true. “In consumer psychology, the term ‘naturalness bias’ is often used to describe our preference for natural over synthetic goods,” writes David Robson in an article for BBC Worklife. Malcolm Gladwell, Robson says, was the first to apply the concept to human abilities during a 2002 presentation to the American Psychological Association (APA). Gladwell said, “On some fundamental level, we believe that the closer something is to its original state, the less altered or adulterated it is, the more desirable it is.” Based on this logic, Gladwell proposed that “someone who had to work hard to achieve success has essentially gone against their ‘nature,’ and their achievements would be respected less.”
The Naturalness Bias: Valuing Natural Over Synthetic
Unfortunately, this means we as a society (including hiring managers) may be choosing the wrong candidates.
A number of studies have been conducted by people like Chia-Jung Tsay, an associate professor at the University College London School of Management, to look at attitudes (often hidden) toward innate versus earned aptitude. “According to these studies, people with a ‘fixed mindset’ believe that their own abilities are set in stone, while those with the ‘growth mindset’ tend to see their abilities as being malleable,” Robson continues.
In general, employees who have a growth mindset are more resilient and better able to handle setbacks. They’re also more likely to continue to work toward their goals despite obstacles they encounter along the way. Recognizing this, Robson says, many organizations are being proactive in training employees to work on developing a growth mindset.
The naturalness bias is one of many unconscious biases all of us carry under the surface. It’s important for hiring managers and others not to dwell on the downsides of natural talent versus hard work but to recognize that bias and take it into consideration when making hiring and other key personnel decisions.
Lin Grensing-Pophal is a Contributing Editor at HR Daily Advisor.