Performance Appraisal Rating Bias

Industrial psychologists have identified ten common causes of bias that affect managers when appraising their team. As you read through this list ask yourself if you have a tendency to act in this way. If you answer 'Yes' then you need to make a conscious effort to avoid the behavior.

Understanding Rating Bias

Similar to Me
This is the tendency for you to rate people higher if they are similar to you, or to rate them lower if they are different. Beware that this similarity/difference could involve obvious factors such as gender or ethnicity. It can also be present in things that are harder to measure, such as personality.

Ask yourself - are you likely to give a higher rating to someone who shares your approach to resolving conflict, even though other approaches may be equally valid?

Positive Leniency
This involves you rating people higher than they deserve in the belief that by giving a higher rating you are increasing their motivation. Be careful, as this approach can serve to undermine the whole appraisal process, particularly when co-workers become aware that unduly high grades have been given to someone else. Any potential gain in motivation undermines overall morale.

Ask yourself - have you ever been tempted to give one of your team a higher rating because you feel they always work hard even if they do not attain the same quality of works as others?

Negative Bias
This means that you are reluctant to assign a high rating for an individual's performance, even when this is well deserved. This approach shows a reluctance to give credit where it is due and is often due to an underlying attribution bias.

Ask yourself - do you find yourself reluctant to award scores higher than 8 out of 10 because you feel no one performs near perfection?

Attribution Bias
This involves ascribing poor performance to factors within the control of the individual whilst ascribing good performance to external factors. For example, if a salesman is successful it is because 'our organization has the best products' where as if he's not successful it is because 'he is lazy or lacks tenacity.'

Ask yourself - do you only take into consideration the factors within your own environment when judging your staff's performance levels, ignoring and not appreciating other pertinent external factors?

Central Tendency
This where you find yourself continually placing your team members towards the middle of the scale and avoiding high or low ratings. This may be because you feel you have collected insufficient data during the appraisal process to truly assess a person.

Ask yourself - even though you know an individual has performed extremely well over the year have you found yourself in the situation where you do not have adequate data to back up your desire to award a high performance, so you give them an average rating as this will not be questioned?

Common causes of rating bias

Saint or Sinner
Do you find yourself being overly influenced by a single favorable or unfavorable trait that colors your judgment of an individual? You may feel all those on your customer support team must be good communicators and those who do not meet your standards are rated poorly, even though the statistics show they resolve calls as well as others because of their technical skill.

Ask yourself - have you ever judged a person harshly because you have combined attributes to rate performance rather than reviewing them separately according to the job description and responsibilities?

Stereotyping
This occurs where you find yourself making generalizations across a group and not recognizing individual differences. For example, people sometimes make assumptions such as 'All salespeople should be extroverts,' and rate a person negatively when they fail to display this behavior, regardless of their successful track record.

Ask yourself - do you find yourself judging your team members based on a stereotype?

Recency Effect
This is where you place undue emphasis on recent events rather than taking into account an individual's performance over the whole of the appraisal period.

Ask yourself - have you judged an individual to be a poor performer because they just made a mistake that caused problems, discounting the fact that they have been one of your most effective team members during the year or project?

Contrast Effect
Do you make comparisons by evaluating an employee relative to the last person you evaluated? You may find that you have given several bad ratings and then feel that you should give several good ratings in order to balance things out, even though there is no logical reason to do so.

Ask yourself - when you are assessing your team's performance do you find yourself wanting to portray the team as having a set of balanced ratings, so halfway through your appraisals alter your judgment of individuals to present this balanced picture?

Organizational Pressure
Does your organization tacitly encourage higher ratings to give the appearance of higher performance than is actually occurring? If you feel this is happening then you need to upwardly manage expectations so that realistic performance appraisals are acceptable to your own senior management.

Ask yourself - are realistic performance ratings met with disapproval by my own management? What are the long-term effects of this 'rating inflation'? Are team members learning to see mediocre performance as acceptable or even praiseworthy?

Being aware of factors that can create rating bias can help you to avoid it and ensure that the information on which you base your appraisals is as objective as possible.

You may also be interested in:
Evaluating Performance Appraisal | Appraisal Data Collection | Evaluating Competencies | Performance Appraisal Rating Scales | Performance Appraisal Reviews | Writing an Annual Performance Summary.


Key Points

  • Industrial psychologists have identified ten common causes of bias that affect managers when appraising their team. These include:
  • A tendency to rate people higher if they are similar to you, or to rate them lower if they are different.
  • Rating people higher than they deserve in the belief that by giving a higher rating you are increasing their motivation.
  • A reluctance to assign a high rating for an individual's performance, even when this is well deserved.
  • Ascribing poor performance to factors within the control of the individual whilst ascribing good performance to external factors.
  • A tendency to avoid high or low ratings.
  • Being overly influenced by a single favorable or unfavorable trait that colors your judgment of an individual.
  • A tendency to make generalizations across a group and not recognize individual differences.
  • A tendency to place undue emphasis on recent events.
  • A tendency to evaluate an employee relative to the last person evaluated.
  • A tendency of some organizations to encourage higher ratings to give the appearance of ever-improving performance.
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