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Six experiments investigated the effect of the promotion criterion in simulated academic promotion decisions. In total, 547 undergraduate students and 33 university faculty members rated a promotion application, and some also indicated their decisions to support or to reject it. Performance ratings were reliably affected by the criterion, with a high criterion resulting in higher ratings than a low criterion, and this criterion effect was found regardless of the evaluator's expertise, whether he or she took the role of an independent assessor or the line manager to the applicant, or whether the criterion was provided by the experimenter or randomly generated by the participant. The criterion also affected the level of support for a candidate when the position applied for was perceived to be extremely competitive, or when a lesser position was considered at a later time. These results provide evidence that the use of a criterion, a fairly common practice in decision-making processes, may bias performance evaluations, which in turn may have ripple effects that affect the outcome of a chain of events. Our results also shed light on the possible mechanisms that underlie the rating biases in performance appraisal.
