A METHODOLOGICAL AND SUBSTANTIVE NOTE ON THE PERFORMANCE-CUE EFFECT IN RATINGS OF WORK-GROUP BEHAVIOR

According to research on the performance-cue effect in work ratings, k nowledge that a group performed well or poorly can trigger raters' imp licit theories, resulting in inaccurate judgments of the group's behav ior. Unfortunately, because information concerning group performance h as always been provided by the experimenter, it has been impossible to tell whether the performance-cue effect reflects the influence of par ticipants' implicit theories or is simply an attempt to conform to the experimenter's belief. To test these 2 explanations, participants obs erved a work group without having received performance information and then completed evaluative and behavioral ratings of the group. Allowi ng participants to evaluate the group free of any externally provided performance information enabled participants to form independently gen erated impressions; thus, the demand characteristic problem was elimin ated. Results indicated the performance-cue effect is not an artifact acid that it is likely due to a systematic response bias.