We all want to be recognized for doing good work. Whether it is winning an award, getting a shoutout from your boss, or receiving a great review online, recognition matters. But what happens when the recognition you get doesn’t match your performance?
In our new paper, published in the American Sociological Review, we explore how experiencing misrecognition—either being overlooked despite strong performance or being rewarded despite weak performance—shapes how people later evaluate others. We find that people tend to reproduce the same kind of recognition they themselves received, even when it means rewarding poor performers or ignoring top ones.
When Recognition Isn’t Based on Merit
In an ideal world, recognition would be based on merit, but in practice, evaluation systems are imperfect. High performers can be passed over, and low performers can receive undue praise. This misrecognition certainly affects the immediate target; but can it also have ripple effects? Specifically, in systems where people alternate between being evaluated and being evaluators themselves—like peer review in science or employee performance reviews—does experiencing misrecognition affect how people later evaluate others?
Along with our collaborator, James Carter, we studied how misrecognition shapes future evaluations across three studies: a field study of professional investors and two preregistered online experiments.
What Did We Find?
We found a consistent pattern across all settings whereby misrecognition has downstream ripple effects. That is, underrecognized evaluators were less likely to reward others, even when they rated them as top performers. And overrecognized evaluators were more likely to reward others, even when they rated them as bottom performers. In short, being underrecognized made people stingier with praise, while being overrecognized made them more generous.
Why Does This Happen?
Interestingly, these patterns stem from different mechanisms.
We find that underrecognized evaluators were driven by perceived unfairness. They felt the process was unfair—and this perception of unfairness fueled their reluctance to reward others. The more unfair they perceived their own evaluation to be, the more likely they were to withhold recognition.
Overrecognized evaluators, on the other hand, were influenced by informational cues. While they also perceived the process as unfair, this sense of unfairness did not shape their evaluation of others. Instead, they seemed to interpret their own overrecognition as a signal about how the system works—leading them to believe recognition wasn’t strictly tied to merit, and therefore they felt more comfortable rewarding others generously. In a follow-up study, when we provided clearer evaluation criteria, the tendency to overrecognize others diminished.
How Can Evaluation Systems Improve?
Our research also suggests two concrete strategies for minimizing these ripple effects of misrecognition within firms and organizations.
The first is to be especially mindful of recent misrecognition. Individuals who recently experienced misrecognition—especially underrecognition—may carry those experiences into their subsequent evaluations of others. Organizations should avoid assigning evaluative responsibilities too soon after such events or at least recognize their potential influence.
The second is to provide evaluators clear, structured criteria. When evaluators are given explicit standards, it reduces ambiguity and limits the influence of personal experiences of misrecognition. For example, detailed rubrics for granting promotions or awards help ensure evaluations are tied to performance—not the evaluators own past experiences.
Connecting to a Broader Perspective on Evaluation and Inequality
This study extends our broader work on how inequality is produced across common evaluation processes. In a recent conceptual article, we outline three forces that shape inequality in evaluations: prevailing societal beliefs (such as stereotypes and assumptions about competence), the design and structure of evaluation processes (including criteria, stages, and tools used), and evaluator characteristics (like demographics, expertise, and prior experiences).
The present study on misrecognition extends this framework by illustrating a new and underexplored pathway through which evaluation systems can produce stratification: In peer evaluation systems where people move from being evaluated to evaluating others, evaluators’ personal prior experiences meaningfully shape the evaluations they later make. Recognition doesn’t just impact one person at one time—it can perpetuate inequalities across people and over time.
As organizations and institutions strive to create meritocratic evaluation systems, it’s important to understand not only how recognition is distributed, but how those experiences shape future decisions. Recognition matters—and when it goes wrong, its effects can echo far beyond a single missed opportunity or undeserved reward.
Read More
Abraham, M., Botelho, T. L., & Carter, J. T. (2025). (Not) Getting What You Deserve: How Misrecognized Evaluators Reproduce Misrecognition in Peer Evaluations. American Sociological Review, 90(3), 387-426. https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224251318051 (Original work published 2025)
Image: Photo from Pexels by Nataliya Vaitkevich.