When you’re friends with someone who you think is amazing, capable, and a potentially great fit for a job going at the place where you work, it can feel like a natural step to help out by referring them to the HR team. From a personal point of view, there’s seemingly no downside: You help your employer land someone you know would be a great worker, and the person in question feels supported. But fresh research suggests that next time it may be best to think twice about referring an acquaintance for a job or even a promotion inside a company, as it can actually harm their work, long-term.

The psychologists who wrote this study framed the whole issue as the referral penalty. It works like this: Imagine there are three or four new hires all arriving at a company at the same time, all meeting similar criteria to join a particular team. But one of those people had their application process smoothed by a referral from someone already inside the company.

The study notes this is a common practice because of the “numerous benefits” from the referral process—and in the muddled and busy job market right now, anything that can streamline the hiring process can seem like a boon. Traditional views also suggest “the presence of a referral signals merit,” as in “if Steve says this new person is good, then they must be.” But the researchers, from the University of Maryland and Texas Christian University, also explained that the feelings of people near this new hire, and the referrals, but who are not involved, may actually be more negative.

In fact, existing employees are “more likely to perceive referral beneficiaries as less merited than nonreferred employees,” the study found. People who land jobs after referrals are seen as having lower legitimacy, or even thought to have lower qualifications than non-referred new hires that the reference is somehow “making up for” or covering over.

These perceptions then have consequences. New hires who were referred by someone ended up receiving less assistance from colleagues who were already working there, Phys.org notes. This was, perhaps, seen as a way of “correcting” for what they felt was a violation of norms relating to landing a job by merit alone. This, and other biased treatments, happened if it was made clear that a new hire who’d benefitted from being referred went through the same interview and selection process as everyone else, and even if they had been a proven good performer since being hired. Established team members still treated the relevant new hire differently, offering less help.

One of the study’s authors, Rellie Derfler-Rozin, a professor of management at the University of Maryland, explained the dichotomy at play in all of this. “Everyone uses referrals,” she noted, and in general, it’s “ positive because people who are referring someone for a role feel responsible.” But then the existing team members may think “they’re probably not as merited because of this,” through some sort of vague notion of a violation of justice. It’s essentially an overly simplistic interpretation.

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