Narratives as a Persuasion Tool in Performance Appraisals

Alice Soldà () and Marie Villeval ()
Additional contact information
Alice Soldà: EM - EMLyon Business School
Marie Villeval: GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon - Saint-Etienne - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - UJM - Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne - EM - EMLyon Business School - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: We investigated whether individuals use narratives about the role of luck to influence decision-makers' interpretation of noisy performance signals in a tournament setting. In an experiment, pairs of workers were either rewarded for accurately estimating their relative performance (Control treatment), persuading a manager they outperformed their competitor (Strategic treatment), or both (Trade-Off treatment). Results show that workers were most likely to adopt self-serving narratives attributing signals of lower performance to bad luck in the Strategic treatment. This tendency was reduced in the Trade-Off treatment where accuracy incentives were introduced. While self-serving narratives influenced managers' decisions regarding the allocation of the winner's prize, they did not change workers' beliefs, suggesting that the narratives did not deceive them.

Keywords: Narratives; Persuasion; Beliefs; Tournament; Performance evaluation; Self-promotion; Online experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-02-24
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04964354v2
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