The combined effect of ratee's bodyweight and past performance information on performance judgments

Few studies have examined how various biases operate in combination to influence performance judgments. Along these lines, the current study used experimental methods to test four competing models of the combined influence of ratee's bodyweight and past performance information on performance judgments. Results were consistent with an additive model, such that ratee's bodyweight and information about ratee's past performance combined independently to affect performance judgments. Consistent with a double disadvantage effect, the least favorable performance judgments were made for an overweight ratee with poor previous performance. Finally, mixed evidence was obtained for the interaction of ratee's bodyweight and perceptions of ratee's physical attractiveness, such that high‐perceived attractiveness buffered against the otherwise negative performance ratings associated with overweight status.     

Comparing two attributional models of job performance in retail sales: A field study

Research investigating attributional style and job performance among sales staff has been limited by its focus on specific sales roles: notably selling insurance by telephone. Important questions therefore remain regarding the mechanism by which attributions influence job performance in sales roles more generally. This paper describes a field study comparing two attributional models of job performance: (1) a learned helplessness (LH) model, and (2) an achievement motivation (AM) model. Managers' performance ratings were collected for 452 retail sales assistants who completed a job‐specific attribution questionnaire and a work‐satisfaction questionnaire. Results indicate that sales assistants who made more internalcontrollable attributions for positive outcomes received higher performance ratings (r =.20, p<.01) and were more satisfied in their work (r =.12, p< .05). The findings provide support for an AM model of job performance among retail sales assistants. They suggest that more successful sales assistants proactively manage their environment in order to create opportunities for successful interactions with customers.     

Evaluating dynamic performance: the influence of salient Gestalt characteristics on performance ratings

It is well recognized that performance changes over time. However, the effect of these changes on overall assessments of performance is largely unknown. In a laboratory experiment, we examined the influence of salient Gestalt characteristics of a dynamic performance profile on supervisory ratings. We manipulated performance trend (flat, linear-improving, linear-deteriorating, U-shaped, and inverted U-shaped), performance variation (small, large), and performance mean (negative, zero, positive) within subjects and display format (graphic, tabular) between subjects. Participants received and evaluated information about the weekly performance of different employees over a simulated 26-week period. Results showed strong main effects on performance ratings of both performance mean and performance trend, as well as interactions with display format. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.     

Can Nonverbal Cues be Used to Make Meaningful Personality Attributions in Employment Interviews?

Purpose  This study examines the role of personality attributions in understanding the relationships between nonverbal cues and interview performance ratings. Design/methodology/approach  A structured behavioral interview was developed for identifying management potential in a large, national company. Using a concurrent design to validate the interview, managers were interviewed and the interviews were videotaped (n = 110). These videotapes were used as stimuli for raters in this study. Findings  Results indicate that raters can make personality attributions using only one channel of information and these attributions partly explain the relationships between nonverbal cues and performance measures. Furthermore, conscientiousness attributions explain the relationship between visual cues and interview ratings, extraversion attributions mediate the relationship between vocal cues and interview ratings. Neuroticism attributions had a suppressing effect for both visual and vocal cues. Implications   No matter how much an interview is structured, nonverbal cues cause interviewers to make attributions about candidates. If we face this fact, rather than consider information from cues as bias that should be ignored, interviewers can do a better job of focusing on job-related behavior and information in the interview, while realizing that the cues are providing information that must be attended to. Originality/value  This study isolated the sources of information provided to raters to either the vocal or the visual channel to examine their impact individually. A Brunswik lens model shows the potential impact of personality attributions predicting both job and interview performance ratings when both channels of information are used.     

A longitudinal study of top-level executive performance

Competency ratings were obtained from a hybrid selection system on 98 top-level executives in a predictive validity design. Hierarchical linear modeling results indicated that "resource problem-solving-oriented" competency ratings predicted initial performance. "People-oriented" competency ratings predicted subsequent performance trends. Utility estimates suggested that the system generated an additional $3 million in annual profit per candidate selected. Groups of executives with similar performance trends were identified who had encountered qualitatively different situational circumstances. Findings imply that a model of executive performance must contain main effects for person (competencies) and situation (economic-industrial) characteristics on both subsequent performance and performance trends. Future research needs to examine which situational circumstances moderate relationships between executive competencies and initial performance or subsequent performance trends.     

The Effects of Team Context on Peer Ratings of Task and Citizenship Performance

Recent trends indicate that organizations will continue their strategic pursuit of teamwork for the foreseeable future, which will create a need for accurate assessments of individuals’ performance in teams. Although individual behaviors can be perceived and assessed by fellow team members (i.e., peers), the extent to which the team shapes perceivers’ judgments versus the target’s behavior is unclear. We conducted two studies to understand how and why team context influences peer ratings of individual performance. In study 1, we conducted cross-classified modeling on a sample of 7160 performance observations of 568 targets made by 567 perceivers, who were each members of four separate teams. Results indicated that team membership accounted for a substantially higher proportion of perceiver, relative to target, variance. In study 2, we conducted social relations modeling with a sample of 679 performance observations collected from 217 individuals nested in 46 teams to test the effects of psychological safety on perceiver, target, and team variance components. Perceptions of psychological safety accounted for proportionally larger perceiver, relative to target, variance in OCB, and task performance ratings. Altogether, team context appears to affect perceivers’ judgments of behavior more than the target’s behavior itself, implying that peer ratings sourced from different teams may not be comparable. We consider the implications for the collection and interpretation of peer performance ratings in teams and the potential implications for social cognitive theory, such that certain aspects of the team context, including psychological safety, may act as a cognitive heuristic by molding perceiver judgments of targets.

     

Task self-efficacy and task interest as a function of performance on a gender-neutral task

This study experimentally investigates several hypotheses about the relationships between performance on a gender-neutral task and gender, self-efficacy, performance attributions, and task interest. Ninety-two subjects were randomly assigned to a success or failure condition and attempted to solve a series of easy or difficult anagrams. Results indicated that changes in self-efficacy expectations as a result of task success or failure were in accordance with predictions from self-efficacy theory; 2 × 2 × 4 ANCOVAs, with the pretest as the covariate, were conducted on self-efficacy strength, level, and task interest. Subjects decreased their ratings of self-efficacy and task interest as a result of the failure experience, and the same ratings increased as a result of the success experience. Few gender differences were found, supporting the hypothesis that the sex linkage of the task significantly influences gender differences in self-efficacy. Analyses of global verbal and mathematical ability ratings resulted in the same trends. Finally, women in the success condition were significantly more likely than men in that condition to attribute their performance to luck; women in the failure condition were significantly more likely than men or women in any other group to attribute their failure to their lack of ability. Implications of these results for future research on career self-efficacy were discussed.     

Children's interpretive understanding,moral judgments,and emotion attributions: Relations to social behaviour

The study investigated interpretive understanding, moral judgments, and emotion attributions in relation to social behaviour in a sample of 59 5‐year‐old, 123 7‐year‐old, and 130 9‐year‐old children. Interpretive understanding was assessed by two tasks measuring children's understanding of ambiguous situations. Moral judgments and emotion attributions were measured using two moral rule transgressions. Social behaviour was assessed using teachers' ratings of aggressive and prosocial behaviour. Aggressive behaviour was positively related to interpretive understanding and negatively related to moral reasoning. Prosocial behaviour was positively associated with attribution of fear. Moral judgments and emotion attributions were related, depending on age. Interpretive understanding was unrelated to moral judgments and emotion attributions. The findings are discussed in regard to the role of interpretive understanding and moral and affective knowledge in understanding children's social behaviour.     

Socializing Attribution: Generalization to “Real” Social Environments1

Social status variables have been shown to influence attributional judgments, but their effects have been demonstrated almost entirely in experimental settings. The influence of such statuses in experimental settings may differ from their influence in natural settings. We examined the influence on attributional judgments of the status characteristics of both subjects and actors in conjunction with variations in the degree of “real world” characteristics of both subjects and social context. These comparisons were drawn through a partial replication of earlier research investigating the effects of a social status variable, victim sex, and a situational variable—type of assault—on attributions about an assault victim. The social status characteristic, victim sex, had less influence on attributions in an adult juror sample than in a student sample and testimony-related characteristics were more influential in the adult juror sample than in the student sample. Thus, the categories of variables that influence attributions appear to depend on the context of judgment and on the breadth of subjects' life experience. These findings are discussed and we conclude with the caution that careful identification of the differences produced by context and subject characteristics is necessary to support generalization of laboratory-based research.     

Probabilistic National Stereotypes

A stereotype of a group can be expressed by the estimated percentage of members that possess certain personality attributes (Brigham, 1971). In a multi-group design, the properties of the percentage measure were examined, and three common assumptions about stereotypes were supported. First, there was high consensus among American and Italian raters regarding the attributes of Americans, Italians, English, and Germans. Second, the perceived typicality of a trait depended largely on contrasts with other traits attributed to the same target group. Contrasts between attributions of the same trait to different groups were largely irrelevant. Third, most stereotype judgments revealed consistency biases. Compared with a Bayesian model of probability estimation, raters exaggerated the similarities between trait attributions (the percentage measure), social categorizations (percentage of people that belong to a group given they possess the trait), and Likert-scaled typicality ratings. Raters underestimated the effects of the traits' global base rates on the typicality ratings.     

Contrast and Rater-Perspective Effects on Judgments of Sexual Harassment Severity: What He Thinks She Thinks,and Vice Versa

We looked at whether ratings biases can influence judgments people make about sexually harassing behaviors. Online participants (N = 176) read and rated the severity of complaint scenarios describing different incidents of alleged harassment. We manipulated: (1) contrast effects, by having people judge other, independent scenarios before judging a target scenario, and (2) rater-perspective effects, by having people judge from both a self- and then an opposite-gender perspective. For the former, we hypothesized that if judgments about harassment are qualitatively similar to judgments made in other areas (e.g., performance appraisal), they too should show contrast effects. For the latter, we hypothesized people would use stereotypes about the other gender, thereby overestimating the true (i.e., self-perspective driven) gender difference. Results supported both hypotheses, suggesting that decision makers should be aware of the possible influence of biases when judging whether behaviors constitute harassment.     

Elaboration on potential outcomes (EPO) and the consultative salesperson: investigating effects on attributions and performance

Past work has found that salespeople make very different attributions when describing successful versus unsuccessful sales. In this article, we explore the influence of elaboration on potential outcomes (EPO), a relatively new individual-specific personality construct that has not been previously examined in the sales context. We show that salespeople's predisposition to engage in predecision elaboration on the potential outcomes of their sales activities across the sales cycle has an important impact on their selling attributions and on their performance, even after accounting for the effects of self-efficacy and trait competitiveness, two other person-specific variables that have been heavily examined in past research. Juxtaposing survey responses with objective sales performance data from 301 salespeople drawn from two sales organizations, the results show that EPO and the more heavily examined variables help to systematically explain salespeople's attributions for success but are only weakly linked to attributions for failure. Moreover, the results show that EPO itself explains a modest, but nevertheless promising, portion of variance in sales performance.     

Social and medical influences on attributions and evaluations of chronic pain

Abstract

Previous research suggests that judgments of pain are subject to social influences, including characteristics of the person in pain, the judge, and the social context in which the judgment occurs. In this experiment, eight vignettes describing a person with chronic low back pain were varied as a function of patient ethnicity (Caucasian vs African-American), litigation status (litigant vs non-litigant), and medical evidence (strong vs weak). Participants (N= 116) read vignettes, made attributions of causality for the person's pain and disability, and evaluated the severity of the pain syndrome. Pain and disability were perceived as more legitimate when the person in pain was a non-litigant and when medical evidence was strong. Evaluations of syndrome severity were more extreme when evidence was strong. A three-way interaction indicated that judgments may have been influenced by ethnic stereotypes. These findings substantiate the influence of social variables in judgments of persons with pain.     

The Differential Effects of Extracurricular Activities on Attributions in Résumé Evaluation

This study examines the effects that extracurricular activities have on the attributions a résumé reader makes about an applicant. Three characteristics of extracurricular activities (number of activities, holding positions of leadership, and relevance of the activities) were manipulated across 24 résumés of fictitious college graduates. Some 219 raters read the résumés and made judgments about the level of the applicant’s quality. The results showed a main effect for the number of activities, a main effect for holding leadership positions, and a main effect for relevance of the activity. Furthermore, a three–way interaction revealed the differential effects that the relevance of the activities had on the attributions at different levels of leadership and number of activities. A mix of career–related and social activities garnered higher ratings for those who held leadership positions in five activities. However, for those who were leaders in only two activities or were not leaders in five, having only career–related activities earned them higher ratings. For applicants who were not leaders in two activities, relevance of the activities played no role.     

Predicting performance on text: Delayed versus immediate predictions and tests

North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota Delayed judgments of learning for word pairs are more accurate than immediate judgments of learning when the memory test is delayed. In the present experiment, I investigated a similar paradigm with text. Participants predicted performance on texts either immediately after reading the texts or after a delay following the reading of other texts, and tests were given either immediately or after a delay. Immediate ratings with an immediate test produced the most accurate predictions, and immediate ratings with a delayed test produced less accurate predictions. Delaying both the ratings and the test did not produce more accurate predictions than immediate predictions and a delayed test. The results for delayed judgments of learning with text were different from those with word pairs.     

Rater Correction Processes in Applicant Selection Using Videoconference Technology: The Role of Attributions1

Increasing global competition for the best employees has resulted in a significant increase in the recruiting and selection of geographically dispersed applicants. Innovative telecommunication technologies (e.g., videoconferencing) have provided a means to interview distant applicants at relatively low cost, compared to face‐to‐face interviews. However, some have suggested that interviewer ratings could be affected by the use of communication media to conduct the interview. In the present laboratory study, we tested a model of rater decision processes to help explain a mechanism for inflated ratings of videoconference‐based applicants. Participants who believed that they were making judgments for a real selection process rated simulated videoconference or face‐to‐face interviews. Raters who perceived interview media to be lower in richness were more likely to make external attributions for the applicant's performance, and consequently rated him more favorably.     

Organizational Concern,Prosocial Values,or Impression Management? How Supervisors Attribute Motives to Organizational Citizenship Behavior

Although prior studies have indicated that organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) tend to be positively related to supervisory ratings of employee performance, only a few studies have investigated how the motives attributed to OCB (e.g., impression management, prosocial motives, organizational concern) might influence such evaluations. Based on Weiner's (1995 ) attribution model and a study of supervisors in varied industries, we found that attributions regarding employees' motives for engaging in OCB are related to supervisors' emotional reactions to such behavior, which are, in turn, related to ratings of employee performance. Implications of the study for management research and practice are discussed.     

Person perception from changing emotional expressions: primacy,recency, or averaging effect?

ABSTRACT

Dynamic changes in emotional expressions are a valuable source of information in social interactions. As the expressive behaviour of a person changes, the inferences drawn from the behaviour may also change. Here, we test the possibility that dynamic changes in emotional expressions affect person perception in terms of stable trait attributions. Across three experiments, we examined perceivers’ inferences about others’ personality traits from changing emotional expressions. Expressions changed from one emotion (“start emotion”) to another emotion (“end emotion”), allowing us to disentangle potential primacy, recency, and averaging effects. Drawing on three influential models of person perception, we examined perceptions of dominance and affiliation (Experiment 1a), competence and warmth (Experiment 1b), and dominance and trustworthiness (Experiment 2). A strong recency effect was consistently found across all trait judgments, that is, the end emotion of dynamic expressions had a strong impact on trait ratings. Evidence for a primacy effect was also observed (i.e. the information of start emotions was integrated), but less pronounced, and only for trait ratings relating to affiliation, warmth, and trustworthiness. Taken together, these findings suggest that, when making trait judgements about others, observers weigh the most recently displayed emotion in dynamic expressions more heavily than the preceding emotion.     

The impact of Primacy/Recency Effects and Hazard Monitoring on attributions of other drivers

The present study examined the impact of Primacy/Recency Effects and Hazard Monitoring on driver attributions. Participants viewed a simulated near collision from the perspective of a trailing motorist. The amount of error free driving prior to the near collision varied between two groups, where the near incident occurred either early or later in their viewing experience. They were then given the opportunity to provide judgments of the offending driver based on how safe, dangerous, risky, and skilled the driver was in general, and to evaluate their overall performance. Results showed a Primacy Effect dominance in that judgments of the driver were most negative in the early group, but this was moderated by high Hazard Monitoring for ratings of “dangerous” and “safe”. This suggests that judgments of other drivers are likely to be quick and based on early information, but are impacted by personal factors such as a tendency to monitor for hazards.     

员工对企业社会责任的差异化反应:基于归因理论的阐释

企业社会责任归因是指个体对企业践行社会责任背后的动机进行主观推理和判断的过程与结果, 也是影响企业社会责任发挥积极作用的关键因素。通过梳理以往研究, 从个体、领导及组织三个层面总结了影响员工企业社会责任归因的因素, 同时从社会交换和组织认同视角深入剖析企业社会责任归因对员工态度和行为的影响及作用机理。未来研究可以进一步明晰不同企业社会责任归因的独特影响因素与作用效果, 基于归因理论探索企业社会责任归因的形成机制, 同时研究多种因素对企业社会责任归因的影响, 考察归因对企业社会责任公平启发机制的影响, 并基于中国情境开展本土化研究。