Abstract

The present study examined the effects of the rater's interpersonal affect towards the ratee on rater's information processing of ratee performance and his/her performance appraisal. This study investigated whether the rater's affect of the ratee will bias his/her interpretation of the meaning of the ratee's performance behavior, his/her retrieval and recognition, and performance appraisal, and whether such bias is caused by selective processing of the affect-consistent information. In addition, it examined the difference between the positive and negative affect in the pattern of selective processing. The results indicated that the rater makes more positive appraisal, and more positive interpretation of the ratee, provided with the same number and same level of performance informations, in case of having positive affect towards the ratee than in case of having negative affect, and, the rater retrieves more the ratee's good performance than his/her poor performance. In differentiated processing of affect-consistent information and affect-inconsistent information, when the rater has positive affect towards the ratee, selective processing of affect-consistent information appeared clearly. However, in case the rater has negative affect towards the ratee, selective processing of affect-consistent information did not occur. Therefore, this study showed that the rater's affect towards the ratee not only makes biased performance appraisal but also makes systematically biased the interpretation and memory of the ratee's performance behavior. These biases are caused by selective processing of affect-consistent information in the case of the positive affect condition.