Even when an agreement meets the legal criteria for consent, individuals may not feel as though they have truly given consent, which can have serious consequences for the employees' relationship with their organization, according to new Cornell research.
The study found that those who solicit consent often overestimate the extent to which people providing their consent feel fully informed of what they are agreeing to. This perspective gap results in employers underestimating their employees' turnover intentions.
"When we're the solicitor, we usually are so steeped in what we're telling the other person - we already know it so well - that we don't realize that it could be their first time hearing it, and they need time to process it to fully understand it," said Vanessa Bohns, the Braunstein Family Professor of organizational development in the ILR School and co-author of "'You Knew What You Were Getting Into': Perspective Differences in Gauging Informed Consent," which published Dec. 24 in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
"From the outside, people would not necessarily recognize that," Bohns said, "and they would assume that if you sign something or agree to something, you must understand what you agreed to."
Bohns and co-author Rachel Schlund, M.S. '20, Ph.D '24, of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, examine the differences between perceived and experienced consent; specifically, the aspect of consent that reflects how informed consenters feel.
Someone with good intentions is likely to believe that being forthcoming about both the positives and negatives of an agreement is the right thing to do for the sake of honesty and for maintaining a consenter's autonomy. However, the researchers theorized - and found - that oversharing led these solicitors to overestimate how informed consenters truly feel. Additionally, it made them overconfident about consenters' intentions to stay with the organization.
"Part of the explanation is egocentric bias," Bohns said. "We're anchored on our own perspective. We think, 'I was forthcoming. I understand what I said. You have heard it all, and so you must also understand it.' We're just bad at taking the perspective of the other person."
Across a series of six studies using real-time interactions, hypothetical vignettes and surveys of hiring managers, the researchers found that solicitors of consent consistently overestimated consenters' subjective experience of consent.
They also found that the gap between solicitors' and consenters' perceptions of consent led to consequences for organizations. Namely, it led solicitors of consent to underestimate whether or not consenters intended to stay.
In several supplemental studies, the researchers found that feeling as if one has not truly consented to various workplace agreements can adversely impact employees' sense of trust and empowerment, commitment to the organization and job engagement.
"A big takeaway for employers is that you want to attend to employees' subjective feeling of how much they understand, because that will determine, down the line, whether they feel like they were hoodwinked," Bohns said.
"Our research suggests that you can't just focus on getting someone to legally consent to something to protect yourself from liability. You have to make sure that they understand it. Give them time to process it. Make sure you go through it and give them time to ask questions. Otherwise, it basically winds up eroding trust and they feel like you don't have their best interests at heart."
Julie Greco is a senior communications specialist for the ILR School.
