Correspondence Bias in Performance Evaluation: Why Grade Inflation Works

Abstract

Performance (such as a course grade) is a joint function of an individual’s ability (such as intelligence) and the situation (such as the instructor’s grading leniency). Prior research has documented a human bias toward dispositional inference, which ascribes performance to individual ability, even when it is better explained through situational influences on performance. It is hypothesized here that this tendency leads admissions decisions to favor students coming from institutions with lenient grading because those students have their high grades mistaken for evidence of high ability. Three experiments show that those who obtain high scores simply because of lenient grading are favored in selection. These results have implications for research on attribution because they provide a more stringent test of the correspondence bias and allow for a more precise measure of its size. Implications for university admissions and personnel selection decisions are also discussed.

Coauthorship Trends in the Field of Management: Facts and Perceptions

“…The increase in co-authoring is likely to persist to the extent that people neglect or underweight co-authorship inflation when they evaluate scholarly productivity. For example, prior studies show that people fail to adjust for grade inflation when they evaluate academic performance, leading them to more favorably evaluate individuals with higher grades, even though these grades reflect semi-arbitrary institutional norms rather than individual ability (Moore, Swift, Sharek, & Gino, 2010;Swift, Moore, Sharek, & Gino, 2013).…”

Learning from My Success and from Others' Failure: Evidence from Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery

“…In a more extreme version of the same phenomenon, when an individual read aloud a randomly assigned speech that did not necessarily reflect her opinions on a given topic (e.g., pro-life vs. prochoice), listeners tended to attribute the views expressed to the reader, though they were told the speech had been randomly assigned to the reader (Jones and Harris 1967). Going back to our initial example, even when people are provided with full information about a situation (e.g., average score on the test and standard deviation), they still make biased attributions of the student's ability (Moore et al 2010).…”

“…For example, suppose that an individual reads about a student's performance on a test and then judges the person's knowledge and ability to decide whether to admit him to a Quizbowl team (Moore et al 2010).…”

“…First, when an individual understands a given context, she is more likely to recognize a failure for what it is -a gap in existing knowledge or practice. When she has a better comprehension of how things work, it will be more difficult for her to blame the outcome on the situation (Moore et al 2010). Not only may prior successful experience increase the likelihood of recognizing a failure as an individual responsibility, thus creating the motivation to improve, but prior successful experience may also help the individual use such knowledge more effectively.…”

"Measurement, Consequences, and Debiasing of Correspondent Inference Making"

“…It is exhibited by a majority of American adults and generalizes across demographic characteristics (Bauman and Skitka, 2010). These biased attributions affect a wide variety of social judgments such as performance evaluations (e.g., Moore et al, 2010), blame and guilt judgments (e.g., Kassin & Sukel, 1997), impression formation in social interactions (e.g., Gilbert, 1998;Ross et al, 1977), and judgments of moral character (Bierbrauer, 1979).…”