Rater Errors Essay

The book goes on to describe a variety of rater errors. After reading all rater errors, it brought back memories. Every rater error categorized in the book had a first and last name. Each evaluator has displayed this type of behavior. Nevertheless, one will explain four rater errors that are all too familiar; the similar to me, leniency, halo, and first impression errors. The similar to me is very common in the workforce. The evaluator rates an individual on a higher performance scale sharing the same attitudes, preferences, personalities, demographic variables including race and gender (Aguinis, 2013). Mainly, the evaluator is seeking to find someone like them. The evaluator is more apt to give a higher score to employees they identify as being the same as them.

The rater gives a high rating to an employee to avoid upsetting them as well as the rest of the staff (Aguinis, 2013). The assessor has a status quo mentality. The evaluator does not want to attract any negative attention. They do not want to be known for giving lousy performance evaluations. They want to ensure everyone is happy including themselves. The halo error occurs when the evaluator gives an employee a high rating because they excel in one area. Therefore, the evaluator is blindsided by the other spheres the employee may not be too productive (Aguinis, 2013). The book gives the example of an employee who is never late or absent from work getting an excellent rating score on their assessment. However, the employee may not be an outstanding performance but instead has to be at work all the time because of financial reasons. The first impression error is identical to the similar to me. The evaluator judges based on the first impression they have of the person (Aguinis, 2013). If the person is not well spoken, the evaluator can easily get turn off by labeling the person as an ineffective