RATE FROM MEMORY
Use your general impression. Call it a year of evidence.
Complete annual reviews from memory and whatever examples come to mind first. Give prominent recent incidents more weight than months of ordinary strong work. When employees dispute a rating, explain that an experienced manager must assess the whole person.
Performance evaluations distorted by recall bias and undocumented impressions.
Evidence, with limitations.
Claim
Performance ratings contain large rater-specific components in addition to target performance information; who provides the rating can materially influence the score.
Evidence
Research decomposing multisource performance ratings found substantial idiosyncratic rater variance, challenging the assumption that a rating is a direct readout of a stable underlying performance trait.
Scientific boundary: Rater-specific variance in performance evaluations does not imply all managers rate from memory or that all ratings lack valid signal.
Sources
These references offer context, not a completed review or a test of this instruction.