Cognitive Biases In Sales Management Evaluations

In a factorial experiment, subjects, most of whom possessed managerial experience, were given information about a salesperson and asked to rate his ability on the job. As predicted, the subjects tended to overutilize effort information and underutilize task difficulty information in making their evaluations. The research reveals that cognitive biases in information processing may influence a crucial sales management responsibility. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for employee promotions and the application of attribution theory to sales personnel evaluations.