Narratives as a Persuasion Tool in Performance Appraisals

Alice Soldà () and Marie Claire Villeval ()
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Alice Soldà: Emlyon business school, CNRS, Université Lumière Lyon 2, Université Jean-Monnet Saint-Etienne, GATE, 69007, Lyon, France
Marie Claire Villeval: CNRS, Université Lumière Lyon 2, Université Jean-Monnet Saint-Etienne, emlyon business school, GATE, 69007, Lyon, France; IZA, Bonn, Germany

No 2505, Working Papers from Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon

Abstract: We study how workers use luck-based narratives to explain noisy performance signals and persuade managers of their higher performance in a tournament setting. In an experiment, workers were rewarded either for accurately estimating their performance relative to a sample of past workers, for persuading a manager that they outperformed their rival, or for achieving either of these goals. Results show that workers were most likely to use self-serving narratives, attributing signals of lower performance to bad luck when these narratives aimed only at persuading managers. This tendency diminished when introducing incentives for accuracy. Narratives successfully influenced managers’ bonus allocation decisions, but did not change workers’ beliefs, suggesting that workers were not fooled by their own narratives when trying to persuade managers.

Keywords: Narratives; persuasion; beliefs; tournament; performance evaluation; online experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D83 J33 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-hrm and nep-lma
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