Cognitive Biases in Performance Evaluations

Performance evaluations are a central component in the administration of public organizations. The predominant model of how both public managers and citizens evaluate performance suggests that satisfaction judgments about performance are based on a comparison of performance to some adapted standard like expectations or goals. However, in a number of experiments we show that perceptions of performance and satisfaction are formed in ways that are not so consistent and better explained by an intuitive mode of thinking. The results question the validity of citizen satisfaction as a measure of performance but also raise more general questions about how performance information is processed by citizens and public managers. Suggestions for a more adequate theory of the relationship between performance and satisfaction and implications for the use of performance information in public organizations are presented and discussed.