Job knowledge, ratee familiarity, conceptual similarity and halo error: An exploration.

The results of numerous social perception studies have led researchers to conclude that raters' implicit cognitive schemes regarding trait and behavior covariance may play a crucial role in the rating judgement process. Cooper (1981a, 1981B) proposed one such cognitive scheme, semantic conceptual similarity, as a key source of halo error in job performance ratings, but was unable to reproduce the results of previous social perception research (e.g., Shweder, 1975). This study employed baseball studies as target ratees to examine the effects of job and ratee knowledge on the relationships of raters' conceptual similarity schemes with rating and true score covariance. The results were consistent with the systemic distortion hypothesis (Shweder, 1975): The association between conceptual similarity and rating covariance was significantly greater when raters lacked sufficient job and/or ratee knowledge. Moreover, the degree of halo was also significantly greater when raters lacked relevant job or ratee knowledge. The potential advantages of using objective measures of actual performance as true score estimates in the study of rater cognitive process, as opposed to the widely videotape simulations, are discussed. Keywords: Performance appraisal, rating errors, and halo errors.