Effects of Previous Performance on Evaluations of Present Performance

Research in social cognition, decision making, and human perception suggests that a ratee's previous levels of performance in a job or task will affect the perception and evaluation of his or her present performance. Strong theoretical and empirical support exists for two competing hypotheses: (a) an assimilation hypothesis and (b) a contrast hypothesis. In order to determine the effects of previous performance on evaluations of present performance, two experiments were conducted. In Study 1, 82 subjects viewed three videotaped lectures presented by the same lecturer. Subjects in the Good Performance condition viewed two good lectures, followed by a lecture of average quality. Subjects in the Poor Performance condition viewed two poor lectures, followed by the same average lecture. There were significant contrast effects for both ratings of the frequency of several critical behaviors and for performance evaluations. That is, subjects in the Poor Performance condition assigned more favorable behavior ratings and higher performance evaluation ratings to the third (average) lecture than did subjects in the Good Performance condition. Study 2 was conducted to test the hypothesis that memory biases were responsible for the contrast effects observed in Study 1. In Study 2, 71 subjects viewed the same videotapes as in Study 1 but rated the third tape from memory a day after viewing the tape. There were weak, nonsignificant contrast effects in Study 2, suggesting that memory biases are not sufficient to explain the results of Study 1. Further research on attention and encoding biases is suggested.