Chapter 5 I/O Psychology

recency error

raters heavily weight their most recent interactions with or observations of the ratee

Performance Appraisal Discomfort Scale (PADS)

raters with greater discomfort in evaluating others and providing them with feedback are among the most lenient raters. not all raters are equally comfortable doing performance appraisals, and the extent to which raters experience discomfort in this setting is likely to affect the quality of the ratings and other elements of the appraisal process

upward appraisal ratings

ratings provided by individuals whose status, in an organizational-hierarchy sense, is below that of the ratees

Which of these is an example of using performance appraisal for a documentation purpose

recording why a certain employee receives a promotion

Researchers who specialize in performance appraisal pursue research questions such as the following

(1) What is the best format or rating scale for performance appraisals? (2) To what extent do rater errors and biases affect the appraisal process? (3) How should raters be trained so that they can avoid these errors and biases? (4) What major contextual variables affect the appraisal process? (5) How important is the organizational context or culture in the appraisal process? (6) What factors affect how ratees and raters react to performance appraisal?

Three basic assumptions about 360-degree feedback

1) When multiple raters are used, participants are happier because they are involved in the process 2) When multiple raters are used, the idiosyncrasies or biases of any single rater are overcome 3) Multiple raters bring multiple perspectives for a broader/more accurate view of performance

3 most important purposes of performance appraisal

1) performance appraisals are used to make important personnel decisions, such as who gets promoted, fired, demoted, or laid off; who gets a large raise, a small raise, or no raise at all; and so on. In efficient organizations, these decisions are not made haphazardly; they are made on the basis of performance appraisal data. 2) performance appraisals are used for developmental purposes. Employees are informed of their performance strengths and weaknesses so that they can be proud of what they are doing well and can focus their efforts on the areas that need some work. 3) documentation of organizational decisions—a purpose that has recently evolved out of personnel decisions and the growing area of personnel law.

Three basic assumptions are held by advocates of 360-degree feedback systems.

1) when multiple raters are used, the participants are happier because they are involved in the process 2) when multiple raters from different levels of the organization rate the same target employee, the idiosyncrasies (and biases) of any single rater are overcome. 3) multiple raters bring with them multiple perspectives on the target employee, allowing for a broader and more accurate view of performance

Frame-of-reference (FOR) training

A type of training designed to enhance raters' observational and categorization skills so that all raters share a common view and understanding of performance levels to improve rater accuracy.

employee comparison procedure - rank-ordering

several employees are ranked from best to worst. Can be useful for promotion decisions

"Follows most procedures but occasionally skips steps" might be an anchor on which type of rating scale

Behaviorally Anchored rating scale (BARS)

Qualitative criteria and reaction criteria

Both phrases refer to the role played by raters' and ratees' reactions in the appraisal process

Which of these is an example of using performance appraisal for a personnel decision?

Choosing which employee to promote

In fact, studies have shown that accuracy sometimes _____________as a function of reducing error

Decreases

Kaia is often very busy at work. When she sees here employees engaging in good performance behaviors, she becomes distracted before she can commit this information into her long term memory. Kaia has had difficulty in the cognitive proce3ssing state known as

Encoding

Research by Kluger and DeNisi (1996) indicated that nearly one third of studies on feedback found

Feedback had a negative effect on performance

Raters who are going to judge research grants have to attend several sessions at which they learn about the rating scales they will use, and they will have opportunities to view examples of good versus poor grant applications this type of training is known as

Frame of reference training

true halo

Halo that results from accurate intercorrelations among performance dimensions rather than from rating error.

Gino, a CEO, is concerned that his managers are purposely misusing appraisal rating scales to make it look as though their teams are very effective. Which action should Gino take to fix the problem?

He should tell managers that they will have to justify their ratings to him in a face to face meeting.

Coaching

One-on-one collaborative relationship in which an individual provides performance-related guidance to an employee.

Mimi is a supervisor with three subordinates- Alice, Blake and Cleo. For performance appraisal purposes, she must first compare Alice to Blake, then Alice to Cleo, ad finally Blake to Cleo. This procedure is known as

Paired Comparison

_____ is a systematic review and evaluation of job performance.

Performance appraisal

Forced-Choice Checklists (FCCL)

Presents the rater with a series of statements that have been grouped so that the statements in each group are similar in terms of social desirability and ability to distinguish between successful and unsuccessful job performance. Helps reduce social desirability and other rater biases. Raters choose two items from a group of four that best describe the employee; purpose is to reduce rater bias/distortion

On her first day on the job, Caryn said something rude to one of her coworkers, since then, however she has always been polite and friendly to her coworkers. If her supervisor rates her as being impolite on her performance evaluation, that supervisor may be making which type of error?

Primacy

distributional errors

Rating errors, such as severity, central tendency, and leniency, that result from a mismatch between actual rating distributions and expected rating distributions.

leniency

The rating error that results when (1) the mean of one's ratings across ratees is higher than the mean of all ratees across all raters or (2) the mean of one's ratings is higher than the midpoint of the scale.

context

The social-psychological climate in which performance appraisal takes place.

Research on the Dunning-Kruger effect suggests that unskilled individuals, when confronted with their lack of skills

are uninterested in improving and are unlikely to use feedback

An I/O psychologist is hired by an organization that is planning to implement a 360 degree feedback system. Which of these should he or she recommend.

employees SHOULD be told exactly h9ow the performance ratings will be used.

employee comparison procedures

evaluation of ratees with respect to how they measure up to or compare with other employees Precise rankings are possible Useful for making administrative rewards on a limited basis Time intensive Not well received by raters (paired comparison) or ratees (forced distribution)

critical incidents

examples of behavior that appear "critical" in determining whether performance would be good, average, or poor in specific performance areas

Feedforward interviews (FFI) differ from traditional performance appraisals in that they

focus on the employees strengths rather than on his or her weaknesses

range restriction

only a small part of the scale range is used in the ratings

Behaviorally anchored rating scales, or BARS

similar to graphic rating scales except that they provide actual behavioral descriptions as anchors along the scale. Precise and well-defined scales—good for coaching Well received by raters and ratees Time and money intensive No evidence that it is more accurate than other formats

One difficulty related to telework is that

supervisors ten to rely to heavily on direct sources of information, which are less frequent in telework.

encoded

the behavior must be cognitively packaged in such a way that the rater is able to store it.

telework

the broad term for doing one's work away from a centrally located office. Working arrangements in which employees enjoy flexibility in work hours and/or location.

first impression error or primacy effect

the opposite of recency error. Here, raters pay an inordinate amount of attention to their initial experiences with the ratee.

The chief problem stemming from distributional errors

the ratings do not adequately discriminate between effective and ineffective performers.

negative halo

the result of grouping negative qualities together. extremely low intercorrelations among performance dimensions

performance appraisal

the systematic review and evaluation of job performance, as well as the provision of performance feedback, is a key component of performance management and one of the most important processes conducted in organizations.

a good performance appraisal system is

well received by ratees, is based on carefully documented behaviors, is focused on important performance criteria, is inclusive of many perspectives, and is forward looking with a focus on improvement.

Adverse impact

when a seemingly neutral employment practice has a disproportionately negative effect on a protected group

Leader-member exchange (LMX) theory

which emphasizes the idea that supervisors have different types of relationships with different subordinates. In short, the relationship that an employee has with his or her supervisor plays a role in the performance appraisal process.

recommendations to follow for implementing 360-degree feedback:

(1) being honest about how the ratings will be used, (2) helping employees interpret and deal with the ratings, and (3) avoiding the presentation of too much information

context issues at the core of current performance appraisal research

(1) the use of employees' reactions to the appraisal rather than accuracy as a criterion for evaluating performance appraisal systems, (2) how the relationship between the supervisor and subordinate affects performance appraisal, (3) the role of organizational politics in the appraisal process, (4) the importance of trust in the appraisal process, (5) the use of multiple feedback sources rather than just the supervisor's feedback in the appraisal process, and (6) the value of providing employees with knowledge about the appraisal system and the opportunity to participate in the appraisal process.

The Dunning-Kruger effect

(Donald Trump) a cognitive bias that basically suggests that unskilled individuals overestimate their abilities and do not have the meta-cognitive skills to even realize that they are doing this. people who are so unskilled that they aren't skilled enough to know how unskilled they are

Process for Developing BARS

*Step 1: SMEs identify and define several dimensions that are important for the job Step 2: Another group generates a series of behavioral examples - critical incident technique Step 3: Retranslation stage - Sort critical incidents into appropriate dimensions Step 4: Rating behavioral examples on effectiveness Step 5: Choose items that represent performance levels

One reason why Rater Error Training (RET) does not appear to improve rating accuracy is that

True halo may be occurring

Rater Error Training (RET)

A type of training originally developed to reduce rater errors by focusing on describing errors like halo to raters and showing raters how to avoid making such errors.

Which is an example of using performance appraisal to make a personnel decision?

choosing which employee to demote

Mon8ique works in the HR department of an organization. She needs to implement a performance appraisal format that is easily developed and then easily used by an organization. Monique should use

Checklists

When helping develop behaviorally anchored rating scales (BARS), a bank teller writes that an example of low effe3ctiveness would be giving a customer the wrong about of cash during a transaction. The bank teller is giving a

Critical Incident

_____ are examples of job performance used in behaviorally anchored rating scales or job-analytic approaches.

Critical incidents

One difficulty with conducting performance evaluations is that managers tend to rely on direct performance information and overlook indirect performance information. Which would be an example of indirect performance information in a telework context.

Hearing from a customer that a remote employee has not been answering his or her phone..

Igor cant stand his boss, but compliments and flatters his boss in order to get the boss to like him. This would be an example of

Impression management

_____ emphasizes the idea that supervisors have different types of relationships with different subordinates.

Leader-member exchange (LMX)

Which is NOT a use for a performance appraisal?

Legal Purposes

severity

Less frequent than leniency and central tendency is this rating error. The tendency to use only the low end of the scale or to give consistently lower ratings to one's employees than other raters do.

Contemporary Trends in Rating Formats

Narrative comments examination Text mining (computer scoring) Feedforward interviews (FFIs) for performance appraisal

Jericho gives all his subordinates low ratings on their appraisals in an effort to intimate them. Jericho is making which type of rating error?

Serverity

The practice of _____ is a working arrangement in which employees enjoy flexibility in work hours and/or location.

Telework

Proponents of reaction criteria for performance appraisal have suggested that worker attitudes toward performance appraisal are more important than psychometric indices because

The effectiveness of a performance appraisal is limited if participants do not support its use.

central tendency

The tendency to use only the midpoint of the scale in rating one's employees.

cognitive-processing models of performance appraisal

The first step in this model is the observation of employees' behaviors. Second, the observed behavior must be encoded, which means that the behavior must be cognitively packaged in such a way that the rater is able to store it Third, after encoding, the behavior must be stored in long-term memory. Fourth, when the appraisal review is being conducted, the stored information must be retrieved from memory. Finally, the rater has to integrate all this information and come to a final rating.

According to research conducted by Werner and Bolino (1997) which action should an organization take to help improve their ability to win a court case regarding their appraisal process.

The organization should conduct a job analysis to help them design their appraisal system .

halo

The rating error that results from either (1) a rater's tendency to use his or her global evaluation of a ratee in making dimension-specific ratings for that ratee or (2) a rater's unwillingness to discriminate between independent dimensions of a ratee's performance. Halo effects can be positive or negative. Personnel managers may give employees who perform well on one dimension higher ratings on another unrelated dimension

performance management system

This system typically includes (1) objective goal setting, (2) continuous coaching and feedback, (3) performance appraisal, and (4) developmental planning. The key points here are twofold: These four components are linked to the company's goals and objectives, and the system is implemented on a continuous cycle rather than just once per year.

weighted checklist

a checklist that includes items that have values or weights assigned to them that are derived from the expert judgments of incumbents and supervisors of the position in question Series of items previously weighted on importance or effectiveness; items indicate desirable and undesirable behavior

A bad grade in a course is an example of

a negative appraisal

Performance management

continuous process of identifying, measuring, and developing the performance of individuals and teams and aligning performance with the strategic goals of the organization. formally define as a motivational system of individual performance improvement

Feedforward Interviews (FFIs)

focuses on employees strengths and best moments. Positive reinforcement review

Carmello is having his managers use a new rating scale to evaluate employees. Prior to using this scale he has his managers attend several sessions where they can learn about the new scale and practice rating example employee behaviors so they all understand how to use the scale. This type of training is known as

frame of reference training

Five vice presidents of a bank provide appraisal ratings of the bank president. When they do this, they are

giving upward appraisal ratings

Recent research on feedback environment and feedback orientation suggest that having a favorable feedback environment is

helpful only if an employee values feedback

Trust

in the appraisal process is the extent to which raters believe that fair and accurate appraisals have been or will be made in their organization.

Ruminators

individuals who persist in negative thinking and feeling related to stressors that they experience.

Multi-Source Feedback (360 Degree)

involves multiple raters at various levels of the organization who evaluate and provide feedback to a target employee.

Employee comparison procedure - paired comparisons

involves the comparison of each employee with every other employee. Becomes more complex as number of ratees increases

One reason organizations use 360 degree feedback is that

it provides a broader and more accurate view of performance.

graphic rating scale

method of performance measurement that lists traits and provides a rating scale for each trait; the employer uses the scale to indicate the extent to which an employee displays each trait Easy to develop Easy to use Lack of precision in dimensions Lack of precision in anchors

similar-to-me error

occurs when raters tend to give more favorable ratings to ratees who are very much like themselves.

Checklists

performance appraisal methods using a series of statements about job performance Easy to develop Easy to use Rater errors such as halo, leniency, and severity are quite frequent

Employee Comparison procedure - forced distribution

raters are instructed to "force" a designated proportion of ratees into each of five to seven categories. This procedure is similar to "grading on the normal curve," whereby teachers assign grades based on meeting the normal curve percentages. is often done because ratings are tied to raises; public lawsuits have involved these systems