Beyond compare: Dimotakis conducts award-winning research into workplace comparisons

Thursday, October 22, 2026

Media Contact: Stephen Howard | Director of Marketing & Communications | 405-744-4363 | stephen.howard@okstate.edu

The phrase “comparing apples and oranges” is commonly used to describe two entities too disparate to compare. The problem? It isn’t exactly accurate.

In 2000, surgeon James E. Barone used satire to bust the myth, publishing a playful scientific analysis of the fruits in the British Medical Journal. As it turns out, there are many ways to compare apples and oranges.

In the workplace, we might sometimes assume our experiences are unique. However, the minute we swap stories with coworkers or even with friends at drastically different workplaces, the comparisons begin.

“You can’t really make sense of the world without comparisons,” said Dr. Nikos Dimotakis, professor and Raymond A. Young Chair in the Spears School of Business Department of Management. “We can’t get away from them. It’s one of the fastest brain processes.”

How do these subjective measurements affect our workplace interactions and motivation levels?

Dimotakis is fascinated with finding out.

Since 2019, he has strengthened Spears Business with practical research that informs employees and managers while revealing deep insight into human behavior.

In December, Oklahoma State University rewarded him for his dedication.

Dimotakis received the 2025 Regents Distinguished Research Award, which recognizes sustained excellence in faculty research and carries a $2,000 permanent increase in annual salary. He was one of seven university-wide winners and the sole recipient from Spears Business.

Dimotakis, who holds an MBA and a Ph.D. in business management and administration from Michigan State University, has teamed up with scholars at OSU and other prominent institutions to produce a prolific library of high-quality research.

Spanning business and psychology, his publications appear in the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Dimotakis serves as an editorial board member for the Journal of Applied Psychology and Personnel Psychology.

Q: How do psychology and sociology fit into management research?

A: That’s where we have emerged from. We are studying people at work. It’s important to deal with people because you can replicate most other resources pretty easily. If you have a shiny new machine that makes things, other people could probably have access to that. But, if you have a work group of particular people configured in particular ways interacting with each other in particular ways, your competitors would be very hard-pressed to copy that.

Q: What is a surprising finding from your work?

A: Good things are not what we would call monotonically good. You can have too much of a good thing. As a matter of fact, that’s more common than we think. So, you would think that having a light workday would be a good thing, but it’s not always. You think people treating you with too much fairness would be impossible, but there can be such a thing. If you expect to be treated poorly and you are treated well, that doesn’t reassure the mind.

I shouldn’t be surprised about this, but workplace history is very important. We were doing a temporal comparison of how poorly a leader treats people, and the only good scenario is if they are never abusive. If they are ever abusive, the anxiety just doesn’t stop, because even if you stop behaving that way, people keep expecting the shoe to drop. The fact that a good thing can be a bad thing if it’s not at the right level, and the fact that a bad thing can remain a bad thing after it stops, were both semi-surprising findings.

Q: How can your research guide managers in the workplace?

A: For managers, the implication is — as they said in the TV show “The Wire” — “All the pieces matter.” You might think that a quick solution to somebody being dissatisfied with work is to give them a salary increase.

Obviously, I’m in favor of salary increases, especially as an employee — but what you will see is that people will compare their salary to their previous salary and be happy, but they might also still compare their salary with other people and still be unhappy. So, addressing part of the problem might not work because people are still making a comparison that is unfavorable.

You will inadvertently create these comparisons that might or might not be salient, and it’s important to look at them. If something is much more of a social comparison as opposed to a temporal comparison or a correct level, then you might be better served by essentially elevating everybody to avoid creating these negative comparisons that people might have.

Q: What would you tell an employee who wants to be more positive at work?

A: Perhaps the most interesting insight I’ve had was very basic. If you’re looking at people’s happiness over time, you find two types of differences. Some people are just generally happier than other people, and some days, people are happier than they are on other days. If you’re a generally happy person but today you were a little less happy, you will probably interpret this as being sad, whereas it might actually not be that notable.

We will bring a lot of our cognitions and happiness into a situation we’re in. Be aware that sometimes, we’re happy or unhappy because of the overall state of affairs, and other times, we are happy or unhappy because of the comparisons we make. It’s about knowing which comparisons we make and being able to unravel those and look at things more objectively with an issue.

Story by: Hallie Hart | Engage@Spears magazine
Photos by: Cole Weiberg