ABSTRACT
Up until this point, I have been concentrating on studies dealing with information acquisition and organization in memory. But over the years we conducted a number of studies that focused on other processes as well. In addition, some studies were conducted which looked at external factors that might also influence cognitive processes. Specifically, in this chapter, I will describe studies dealing with the role of appraisal purpose, ratee gender, and rater affect towards ratees as potential factors impacting upon rater cognitive processes and ratings. These studies help fill in the picture of what goes on during the appraisal process, but a number of these studies were “one-shot” topics, where we did not plan or execute any follow-up studies. A noteworthy exception to this is the case of studies on rater affect. In this case there was a follow-up study in the field, and, although affect was not a big part of our original model or research propositions, I believe that factors such as affect and rater motivation (which we have not studied, but others have, e.g., Cleveland, Murphy, & Williams, 1989; Murphy & Cleveland, 1991) have already become “hot” topics for performance appraisal research, and will become more important in the future. In any event, the studies described in this chapter all have something to say about the appraisal process.
