Workers are happy to see their bosses earn many times what they themselves take home, research shows. It explodes the myth that big pay gaps in firms cause low morale.

The findings, to be presented by Andrew Clark at this week’s Royal Economic Society conference at Warwick University, show that high pay among managers does not cause resentment because workers aspire to being paid such salaries themselves.

“From the exterior, managerial wages may seem to be way too high,” the paper says. “But from within the firm, the picture may be far rosier. Others’ good fortune today may be my own good fortune tomorrow.”

Even lower down the income scale, the research shows people are happy as long as they believe their own pay is not stuck. Men accept big pay differentials more readily than women, though public sector workers are more resentful than those in the private sector of high pay for bosses.

The paper, Job Satisfaction and Coworker Wages: Status or Signal?, challenges the belief that lower-paid workers are subject to an “envy” or “status” effect when bosses or other workers are paid much more.

Instead, it shows what researchers have identified as the “tunnel” effect. Drivers in a two-lane traffic queue in a tunnel are happy when they see the other lane starting to move, because they expect they will soon be moving too. In the same way, workers see higher pay for colleagues as the direction they will soon be heading in.

John Hutton, the business secretary, said last week that Britain should celebrate high pay. “Rather than questioning whether high salaries are morally justified, we should celebrate the fact people can be enormously successful in this country,” he said.

However, Brendan Barber, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, said he was “out-of-touch”. “We look to ministers to stimulate debate about the absence of any link between company success and boardroom pay, not to celebrate it.”

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