Evidence of Pseudo-Productivity

In this week’s video, I review Cal Newport’s new book Slow Productivity. The book itself is interesting, but the part I enjoyed was how it connected to a rich literature on the nature of the firm.

Cal doesn’t spend much time on this rich history, which is fine. But there are some interesting studies out there on how the market rewards visible signs of work over the actual productive work. So in this short post, let me list the ones that come to mind.

• In one experiment, remote workers were 13% more productive than workers in the office, but they were 50% less likely to be promoted.

• Employees who smoke are more likely to be promoted when their managers also smoke (probably because they take cigarette breaks together).

(I decided to go with this image for the post because Jesus critiqued contemporary religion for being a whited sepulcher, looking good on the outside even though the inside was death and decay. A nice metaphor for pseudo-productivity.)

Over-indexing on visible signs can lead us to make funny psychological errors.

• Used car prices see a discontinuous drop at each 10,000 mile mark (thus, people are relying on the visible odometer to infer invisible quality).

• Soccer refs are more likely to favor the home team when there’s a large crowd (likely because their calls are influenced by noisy fans).

And, of course, putting too much weight on visible cues is a key factor in discrimination.

• When symphonies were not allowed to see the person who was auditioning, they were more likely to accept women.

• The number of fouls called in a basketball game are related to the race of the player and the racial mix of the referees.

• This one hits too close to home: economists who are more attractive are more likely to be successful in academia.

I cite some of these in my video review, but let me know in the comments if there are other studies I should look at.