Effects of Organizational Perspective on Implicit Trait Policies About Correctional Officers' Job Performance

This study tests the general idea that people in different organizational positions can have different perspectives on what performance means in a particular job and that these different perspectives are reflected in their implicit trait policies (ITPs) about performance in that job. We test the hypothesis that prison inmates harbor ITPs about the importance of agreeableness and conscientiousness in correctional officers' performance that are different from the ITPs harbored by officers and supervisors. Our results show that critical incidents of officers' performance that are generated by inmates emphasize agreeableness more and conscientiousness less than critical incidents generated by officers and supervisors. Our results also show that inmates' ratings of the effectiveness of officers' behavior described in critical incidents are more strongly associated with the agreeableness of the behavior and less strongly associated with the conscientiousness of the behavior than are officers' and supervisors' ratings.