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ACCA Applied Knowledge · Business and Technology · Review and appraisal of individual performance

A manager conducts annual appraisals but only considers events from the last six weeks before the meeting, ignoring the rest of the year. Which appraisal problem does this best illustrate?

This is the recency effect: the appraiser gives excessive weight to recent events rather than the whole appraisal period. It differs from the halo effect, where one trait influences all ratings, from central tendency, where everyone is rated average, and from leniency, where ratings are generously inflated.

  1. ARecency effectCorrect
  2. BHalo effect
  3. CCentral tendency
  4. DLeniency bias

Explanation

Recency effect is giving undue weight to recent events when assessing performance over a whole period. Halo effect involves one trait colouring all ratings, central tendency is rating everyone as average, and leniency is rating too generously.

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