The Moderating Role of Interpersonal Affect in the Relationship between the Evaluator’s Prior Commitment and Subjective Performance Evaluation

Abstract

This research aimed to analyze the moderating effect of interpersonal affect in the relationship between the evaluator's prior commitment and subjective performance evaluation. As method, the 3x2 experiment was used in a sample composed of 200 professionals and academics from the management area. The data was analyzed using the Mann-Whitney U test and Tobit regression. The results show that the evaluator’s prior commitment and interpersonal affect positively and significantly influence the probability that the manager will provide the employee a promotion. In the moderation analysis, it was possible to see a positive and significant moderating effect, allowing us to infer that when the manager likes the employee, the commitment to the previous decision highly affects the probability of promotion of such employee. In other words, the manager gets more inclined to increase the commitment to the chosen decision. However, managers who favored employees’ promotion provided similar performance ratings to those managers who did not participate in the hiring process. Therefore, the results do not point to the existence of the escalation bias in commitment in the analyzed context. Theoretically, this research contributes by inserting a new behavioral construct in the context of escalation bias (interpersonal affect). From a practical point of view, it contributes by providing evidence of how previous decisions interact with the evaluator’s fondness for the subordinate to influence future decisions on performance evaluations, so they can be useful in helping companies to improve their performance evaluation systems, incorporating behavioral aspects of the decision makers.