Effects of Context and Initial Impression on Performance Evaluation: An Experimental Study
Date Issued
2011
Date
2011
Author(s)
KAO, Yu-Han
Abstract
This study examines the effects of context and initial impression on the superior’s evaluation of the subordinate’s performance. In this study, the context is defined as the performance of the subordinate preceding the target subordinate (hereafter “performance of the preceding subordinate”). Adopting a 3 (good performance of the preceding subordinate, no performance information on the preceding subordinate, poor performance of the preceding subordinate) x 3 (good impression on the target subordinate, no impression information on the target subordinate, poor impression on the target subordinate) between-subjects factorial design, this study recruits 132 executive M.B.A. students as the experimental participants in which they are required to serve as the superior and to evaluate the performance of a target subordinate after reading some materials about the target subordinate, and performance information on the preceding subordinate (except for those in the control groups).
ANOVA shows that context (i.e., performance of the preceding subordinate) significantly affects the participants’ performance evaluation, which is consistent with contrast effects. The results also show that initial impression on the target subordinate has a significant effect on the participants’ performance evaluation. But the interaction between context and initial impression is not significant, suggesting that initial impression cannot mitigate contrast effects.
Subjects
context
initial impression
contrast effects
performance evaluation
Type
thesis
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