During performance appraisal, a supervisor rates an

Solution

The halo effect occurs when a supervisor’s overall positive impression of an employee—often triggered by a single outstanding trait or achievement—colors their judgment across all other performance criteria. In this scenario, the supervisor's assessment of "excellent" in every category is a direct result of one high-visibility success, causing them to overlook the employee's otherwise average performance    

• Central tendency bias: This error involves rating all employees as average or in the middle of the scale to avoid extremes, rather than rating them as "excellent" based on one success.
• Leniency bias: This is a general tendency to rate all employees higher than their actual performance merits, regardless of specific recent projects or single traits.
• Recency bias: While the high-visibility project was recent, recency bias specifically refers to over-weighting an employee's most recent actions (positive or negative) over their performance for the entire period. It does not inherently involve generalizing one trait to all other criteria.
• Horn effect: This is the inverse of the halo effect; it occurs when one negative trait or failure causes a supervisor to rate an employee poorly in all other areas