Common appraisal errors include: 1) The halo/horns effect where raters inappropriately generalize performance in one area to unrelated areas. 2) First impression errors where initial positive or negative judgments color later evaluations. 3) The similar-to-me effect where raters rate those similar to themselves more highly. 4) Contrast effects where people are evaluated compared to others rather than standards.

1. Common Appraisal Errors

2. Halo/horns effect
Inappropriate generalizations from one aspect of an
individual’s performance to all areas of that person’s
.
performance
Ramu’s outstanding writing ability caused his
supervisor to rate him highly in unrelated
areas where his performance was actually
mediocre.
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3. First impression Error
Tendency of a rater to make an initial positive or negative judgment of
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
poorly. Within a month the
employee’s performance
returned to its previous high
level, but The supervisor’s
opinion of the individual’s
performance was affected by
the initial negative impression.
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4. Similar-to-me effect
The tendency of individuals to rate people who resemble themselves more highly than they rate
others
Laxmi was a single mother with four
children and was promoted to
supervisor.
Unknowingly she rated several other
women who were also single mothers
higher than their performance
warranted.
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5. Contrast Effect
Tendency of a rater to evaluate people in comparison with
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
rated your friend lower the second
time, contrast effect is at work.
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6. Stereotyping
The tendency to generalize across groups and ignore individual differences
Sanjay was quiet and reserved, however, he is well liked and respected by
both internal and external customers. His boss rated him lower than the
other customer service personnel since he didn’t “fit the mold.”
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7. Negative and Positive skew
The opposite of central tendency: the rating of all
individuals as higher or lower than their
performance warrants
Ajitha rates all of her employees higher
than she feels they actually deserve , in the
hope that this will cause them to live up to
the high rating. While Laxmi sets
impossibly high standards and is proud of
never having met an employee who
deserved a superior rating.
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8. Attribution bias
The tendency to attribute performance
failings to factors under the control of the
individual and performance successes to
external causes.
Srinivas, attributes the successes of her work
group to the quality of her leadership and
the failings to their bad attitudes and
inherent laziness.
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9. Central tendency
The inclination to rate people in the
middle scale even when their performance
clearly warrants a substantially higher or
lower rating.
Because Harold had a concern that he would not
be able to deal with confrontation during an
appraisal session, he rated all of his employees as
“Meets Expectations.”
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10. 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.
Rajitha kept no
records of critical
incidents. When she
began writing the
appraisals for her
employees she
discovered that she
could only recall
examples of either
positive or negative
performance for
the last two months.
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