Halo/horns effect

Inappropriate generalizations from one aspect of an

individual’s performance
. to all areas of that person’s
performance

Common Appraisal Errors

Ramu’s outstanding writing ability caused his

supervisor to rate him highly in unrelated
areas where his performance was actually
mediocre.

First impression Error Similar-to-me effect

The tendency of individuals to rate people who resemble themselves more highly than they rate
Tendency of a rater to make an initial positive or negative judgment of others
an employee and allow that first impression to colour or distort later
information

A new supervisor noticed

an employee who was going
through a divorce performing Laxmi was a single mother with four
poorly. Within a month the children and was promoted to
employee’s performance supervisor.
returned to its previous high Unknowingly she rated several other
level, but The supervisor’s women who were also single mothers
opinion of the individual’s higher than their performance
performance was affected by warranted.
the initial negative impression.

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Contrast Effect Stereotyping

Tendency of a rater to evaluate people in comparison with The tendency to generalize across groups and ignore individual differences
other individuals rather than against the standards for the
job

Think of the most attractive person

you know and rate this person on a
scale of 1 to 10. Now think of your
favorite glamorous movie star. Re-
rate your acquaintance. If you
Sanjay was quiet and reserved, however, he is well liked and respected by
rated your friend lower the second
both internal and external customers. His boss rated him lower than the
time, contrast effect is at work.
other customer service personnel since he didn’t “fit the mold.”

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Negative and Positive skew Attribution bias

The opposite of central tendency: the rating of all The tendency to attribute performance
individuals as higher or lower than their failings to factors under the control of the
performance warrants individual and performance successes to
external causes.

Ajitha rates all of her employees higher

than she feels they actually deserve , in the Srinivas, attributes the successes of her work
hope that this will cause them to live up to group to the quality of her leadership and
the high rating. While Laxmi sets the failings to their bad attitudes and
impossibly high standards and is proud of inherent laziness.
never having met an employee who
deserved a superior rating.

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Central tendency Recency effect

The tendency of minor events that have happened recently to

have more influence on the rating than major events of many
months ago.
The inclination to rate people in the
middle scale even when their performance
clearly warrants a substantially higher or Rajitha kept no
lower rating. records of critical
incidents. When she
began writing the
appraisals for her
employees she
Because Harold had a concern that he would not discovered that she
be able to deal with confrontation during an could only recall
appraisal session, he rated all of his employees as examples of either
“Meets Expectations.” positive or negative
performance for
the last two months.

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