The effect of implicit theories on raters' inference in performance judgment: Consequences for the validity of student ratings of instruction

Abstract

Performance judgment is a situation of incomplete information where raters' inference would play an important role. Consequently, the schematic nature of human cognition may introduce implicit personality theory bias in performance judgment. To demonstrate this, a causal model of performance rating judgment was framed from the theories of person perception and social cognition. The model yielded a good fit to the data obtained from a performance rating task where the availability of performance information was manipulated. The results supported the hypotheses that student raters' inferences are partly contaminated by their implicit theories of a good instructor. Student raters inferred traits and behaviors and provided ratings for corresponding items even when the instructor behavior was limited to a subset of performance data only. The findings imply that one aspect of invalidity in student ratings of instructors is the bias in human inference due to the implicit theories of effective instructional behavior.