Studiet viser, at vurderinger af individer ofte er præget af en “halo-effekt”, hvor bedømmerens generelle indtryk af en person påvirker deres vurdering af specifikke egenskaber som intelligens og lederskab. Dette kan føre til skæve og overensstemmende vurderinger af forskellige kvaliteter, hvilket underminerer nøjagtigheden.
Titel på undersøgelse:
A Constant Error in Psychological Ratings.
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Hele abstrakt på originalsprog:
The article introduces the halo effect, a cognitive bias where an observer’s overall impression of a person influences specific trait evaluations. Conducted at MIT, Thorndike’s study analyzed ratings from military and industrial settings, where supervisors rated subordinates on traits like intelligence, leadership, and dependability. He found that ratings were consistently skewed by a general positive or negative perception, rather than reflecting independent trait assessments—for example, a highly regarded officer received uniformly high scores across unrelated attributes. Thorndike tested this by comparing correlations between traits (e.g., physique and intelligence) and found they were artificially inflated beyond plausible levels, suggesting a “constant error” in judgment. He proposed that this bias stems from an inability to isolate traits, impacting fields like performance appraisals and education. The article calls for refined rating methods to mitigate this error, laying foundational groundwork for understanding how subjective impressions distort objective evaluation, a concept widely influential in psychology and organizational behavior today.