An outcome bias occurs when an evaluator allows the outcome of a decision rather than the appropriateness of the decision to influence ratings of the decision maker. The present experiment investigated the outcome bias in a setting in which evaluators rated a salesperson's performance. Results revealed that outcome information interacted with decision appropriateness information to influence measures of decision quality. However, when the dependent measure was a general attributional evaluation of the salesperson, only outcome information influenced ratings. The results are discussed in terms of the potential negative effect of an outcome bias on salesperson motivation and performance.
Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 41 citations exist upstream.