IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joepsy/v33y2012i3p578-589.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Lie hard: The effect of self-assessments on academic promotion decisions

Author

Listed:
  • Chen, Zhe
  • Kemp, Simon

Abstract

Five experiments investigated whether including self-assessments in applications for a promotion might affect their evaluation, and how this effect was influenced by measures taken to reduce or eliminate it. Self-assessments influenced judgment when the applications were judged by novices and experts, and regardless of whether the participants were warned about the unreliability of self-assessments. The effect was reduced but not eliminated if a second set of assessments was available. A similar influence was found when an arbitrary set of ratings was substituted for the self-assessments, and consider-the-opposite arguments to counter the self-assessments functioned in a similar way to that found in previous studies of anchoring. Overall, the effect of self-assessments seems similar to that of anchoring, when information that is known to be unreliable or unrelated to a target variable still affects estimates of the target variable. Practically, including self-assessments as a component of performance appraisal is likely to bias the results.

Suggested Citation

  • Chen, Zhe & Kemp, Simon, 2012. "Lie hard: The effect of self-assessments on academic promotion decisions," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 578-589.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:33:y:2012:i:3:p:578-589
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2011.11.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487011001711
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joep.2011.11.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Makiney, Jeanne D. & Levy, Paul E., 1998. "The Influence of Self-Ratings versus Peer Ratings on Supervisors' Performance Judgments," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 74(3), pages 212-228, June.
    2. Northcraft, Gregory B. & Neale, Margaret A., 1987. "Experts, amateurs, and real estate: An anchoring-and-adjustment perspective on property pricing decisions," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 84-97, February.
    3. Klimoski, Richard & Inks, Lawrence, 1990. "Accountability forces in performance appraisal," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 194-208, April.
    4. Kemp, Simon, 2003. "The effect of providing misleading cost information on the perceived value of government services," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 117-128, February.
    5. Chapman, Gretchen B. & Johnson, Eric J., 1999. "Anchoring, Activation, and the Construction of Values, , , , , ," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 115-153, August.
    6. Thorsteinson, Todd J. & Breier, Jennifer & Atwell, Anna & Hamilton, Catherine & Privette, Monica, 2008. "Anchoring effects on performance judgments," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 107(1), pages 29-40, September.
    7. Joyce, Ej & Biddle, Gc, 1981. "Anchoring And Adjustment In Probabilistic Inference In Auditing," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(1), pages 120-145.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thorsteinson, Todd J. & Breier, Jennifer & Atwell, Anna & Hamilton, Catherine & Privette, Monica, 2008. "Anchoring effects on performance judgments," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 107(1), pages 29-40, September.
    2. Sangsuk Yoon & Nathan M. Fong & Angelika Dimoka, 2019. "The robustness of anchoring effects on preferential judgments," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 14(4), pages 470-487, July.
    3. Nathan N. Cheek & Sarah Coe-Odess & Barry Schwartz, 2015. "What have I just done? Anchoring, self-knowledge, and judgments of recent behavior," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 10(1), pages 76-85, January.
    4. repec:cup:judgdm:v:10:y:2015:i:1:p:76-85 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. William J. Matthews, 2011. "What would judgment and decision making research be like if we took a Bayesian approach to hypothesis testing?," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 6(8), pages 843-856, December.
    6. repec:cup:judgdm:v:14:y:2019:i:4:p:470-487 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. repec:cup:judgdm:v:6:y:2011:i:8:p:843-856 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Daniel Fonseca Costa & Francisval Carvalho & Bruno César Moreira & José Willer Prado, 2017. "Bibliometric analysis on the association between behavioral finance and decision making with cognitive biases such as overconfidence, anchoring effect and confirmation bias," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(3), pages 1775-1799, June.
    9. Thomas Görzen, 2019. "Can Experience be Trusted? Investigating the Effect of Experience on Decision Biases in Crowdworking Platforms," Working Papers Dissertations 55, Paderborn University, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics.
    10. Arbel, Yuval & Ben-Shahar, Danny & Gabriel, Stuart, 2014. "Anchoring and housing choice: Results of a natural policy experiment," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 68-83.
    11. Meub, Lukas & Proeger, Till E., 2015. "Anchoring in social context," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 29-39.
    12. Mussweiler, Thomas & Englich, Birte, 2005. "Subliminal anchoring: Judgmental consequences and underlying mechanisms," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 98(2), pages 133-143, November.
    13. repec:cup:judgdm:v:2:y:2007:i::p:48-53 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Kevin Bauer & Andrej Gill, 2024. "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Algorithmic Assessments, Transparency, and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 35(1), pages 226-248, March.
    15. Bond, Samuel D. & Carlson, Kurt A. & Meloy, Margaret G. & Russo, J. Edward & Tanner, Robin J., 2007. "Information distortion in the evaluation of a single option," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 102(2), pages 240-254, March.
    16. Brady, Garrett L. & Inesi, M. Ena & Mussweiler, Thomas, 2021. "The power of lost alternatives in negotiations," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 59-80.
    17. Whyte, Glen & Sebenius, James K., 1997. "The Effect of Multiple Anchors on Anchoring in Individual and Group Judgment," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 74-85, January.
    18. Gediminas Adomavicius & Jesse C. Bockstedt & Shawn P. Curley & Jingjing Zhang, 2013. "Do Recommender Systems Manipulate Consumer Preferences? A Study of Anchoring Effects," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 24(4), pages 956-975, December.
    19. Adam J. L. Harris & Maarten Speekenbrink, 2016. "Semantic cross-scale numerical anchoring," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 11(6), pages 572-581, November.
    20. Donoho, Casey L. & Swenson, Michael J., 1996. "Top-down versus bottom-up sales tactics effects on the presentation of a product line," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 51-61, September.
    21. Mussweiler, Thomas & Strack, Fritz, 2001. "The Semantics of Anchoring," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 86(2), pages 234-255, November.
    22. Todd McElroy & Keith Dowd, 2007. "Susceptibility to anchoring effects: How openness-to-experience influences responses to anchoring cues," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 2, pages 48-53, February.
    23. Persichina, Marco & Kriström, Bengt, 2022. "Self-selected intervals in psycho-physic experiments and the measurement of willingness to pay," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    24. Wong, Kin Fai Ellick & Kwong, Jessica Yuk Yee, 2000. "Is 7300 m Equal to 7.3 km? Same Semantics but Different Anchoring Effects," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 314-333, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Performance appraisal; Self-assessments; Cognitive bias; Anchoring effect; Promotion;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J33 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Compensation Packages; Payment Methods

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:33:y:2012:i:3:p:578-589. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joep .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.