Judging the performance of a team is fairly straightforward, but judging the contributions of individuals within that team is often significantly harder.  New research from Cass Business School suggests we often take a, wholly unsatisfactory, shortcut that sees the performance of a few individuals in that group transplanted onto them all.

The researchers conducted several experiments to explore how the performance of individuals in a group can flavor our opinion of the entire group.  What’s more, we often base this opinion on something as arbitrary as those employees who are numbered 1st or 2nd, such as the checkout operative in the 1st position in the supermarket.

The authors suggest that someone who has a bad experience at cashier #1 will tend to judge the entire store more harshly than if their bad experience had occurred at checkout #3 or #5.  Of course, the opposite also occurs, with a positive experience at cashier #1 resulting in an inflated sense of your joy in the entire store.

“If the first group member to do something is bad then the whole group is seen as bad, if the first group member to do something is great then the whole group is seen as great, and this is much less the case if the middle or the last member does something,” the researchers explain.

Influential employees

The researchers suggest that this occurs largely because we perceive the first member of any group as being the most influential member of the group, and therefore we believe we can take the mental shortcut of assuming they are representative of the wider group.

This trend emerged in a range of scenarios, such as the cancer researchers who were given a temporary work visa with the potential of an extension.  When people were informed that the scientist who had been given their visa first had made a grave mistake, their error reflected on the competence of the other researchers, and people were less supportive of the entire group having their visas extended.

“When the first one makes the big mistake, people are more likely to say that all these scientists are terrible and we don’t want them in the country,” the researchers explain.  “People are more forgiving when the mistake is made by the scientist who receives their visa in the middle or last in the group and don’t make such a harsh judgment.”

This occurred even when there was no clear reason to believe that the first researcher had any influence on the overall group, or indeed that the overall group was incompetent in any way.  That one bad apple in first place was nonetheless sufficient for people to want the whole batch deported.

This same phenomenon emerged across the research, whether judging athletes, students or even pedigree racehorses, and the authors believe their findings have important implications for how performance reviews are conducted in the workplace.