Influence of Raters' Self-Consciousness and Appraisal Purpose on Leniency and Accuracy of Performance Ratings: A Critique

Abstract

Theoretically, evidence challenges the construct validity of the self-consciousness scales used by Jawahar and Stone. The demand characteristics introduced by the experimental procedures called into question the validity of their findings. Moreover, the statistically significant results for both measures of rating leniency and accuracy as operationalized was likely an artifact of using a leniency measure which shares considerable overlapping variance with the accuracy measure. Although self-consciousness as a moderator has theoretical interest, further work is needed to provide evidence for self-consciousness as a moderator variable in the rating process. In short, we are skeptical of the findings and share the authors' caveat in interpreting the results.