The Effects of Group Interdependence on Supervisor Performance Evaluations

A laboratory experiment was designed to test the effect of group member interdependence on supervisory performance ratings. Subjects played the role of supervisors in charge of evaluating members of a three‐person work group which was constructed to include two good performers and one poor performer. Supervisors were either told that group members would work closely together (high interdependence) or independently (low interdependence). As hypothesized, supervisors rated the poor performer higher and the good performers lower when the group was portrayed as highly interdependent than when the group members were relatively independent.