Perception of Instructor in Relation to Self and Evaluation of Instructor's Performance

Abstract

68 college juniors rated themselves and the instructor on the 49 trait adjectives in Bills' Index of Adjustment and Values. They were then asked to rate the instructor's teaching performance on a different questionnaire. The correspondence between the average rating given self and the average given the instructor across the 49 adjectives was taken as an index of assumed-similarity of student to instructor. The 34 students who perceived the instructor as being most superior to themselves on the trait adjectives rated his teaching performance higher than the 34 who perceived him as being more similar to themselves. The findings suggest a halo effect in student ratings of instructor performance.