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A study examining discretionary payment decision-making suggests that women need to achieve high outcomes to receive bonuses, but men can expect bonuses for low outcomes if evaluators hold them in high regard.

The findings imply that "policies designed to counteract gender discrimination should not only target biases in beliefs, but also the differential criteria that evaluators may use in their subjective evaluation of men and women," the researchers say.

Involving academics from the University of Melbourne, Monash University, and University of Exeter, the study asked almost 600 participants to make investment decisions in scenarios where the outcomes were jointly determined by actions and luck. Then, the cohort was divided into groups of three; one person in each group was appointed the leader and their investment decision was implemented for the group.

The other group members' beliefs about the leader's investment choice was recorded before and after they observed the investment outcome, and they were asked to make decisions about discretionary payments for the leader...