The psychological effects of centrality bias: an experimental analysis

Irene Trapp and Rouven Trapp ()
Additional contact information
Irene Trapp: TU Dortmund University
Rouven Trapp: University of Groningen

Journal of Business Economics, 2019, vol. 89, issue 2, No 2, 155-189

Abstract: Abstract This paper examines the psychological mechanisms that are activated by centrality bias in the context of subjective performance evaluation. Centrality bias refers to compressed evaluations of subordinates, implying that the variance in the performance of the evaluated employees is higher than the variance in the rewards determined by the superior. Based on insights from the social psychology literature, we argue that centrality bias may trigger different psychological mechanisms which affect the subordinates’ willingness to exert work effort. We propose that these effects differ depending on whether employees are above-average or below-average performers. In line with our predictions, we detect a considerable asymmetry in the effects of centrality bias. In particular, we find that the relationship between centrality bias and the willingness to exert work effort is negatively mediated by controlled motivation and procedural fairness perceptions for above-average performers. For below-average performers, we find that centrality bias is positively related to procedural fairness perceptions which are, however, unrelated to the willingness to exert work effort. In addition, we shed light on the role of peer information and find that its disclosure has not a significant impact on the psychological mechanisms at work.

Keywords: Autonomous motivation; Centrality bias; Controlled motivation; Procedural fairness; Subjective performance evaluation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M41 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11573-018-0908-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jbecon:v:89:y:2019:i:2:d:10.1007_s11573-018-0908-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/11573

DOI: 10.1007/s11573-018-0908-6

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Economics is currently edited by Günter Fandel

More articles in Journal of Business Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().