EVIDENCE OF SYSTEMATIC COGNITIVE ERRORS IN JOB PERFORMANCE SELF-RATINGS

The present study questions the indiscriminate use – or misuse – of job performance self-rating measures in work and organizational psychology. We provide evidence for systematic cognitive distortions in the traditional predictors (i.e., work engagement and work experience) of self-ratings of job performance. A cross-sectional study was conducted (N = 470) where employees were asked to fill in a questionnaire composed of self-report measures on job performance, work engagement and systematic cognitive distortions. Findings suggest that highly engaged older (i.e., aging) em-ployees tend to have optimistic judgments of their job performance which was reflected in higher levels of self-rated task performance. Likewise, adults with higher work experience (i.e., long tenured) tend to adhere to social and organ-izational conventions in line with cognitive decision rules and systematic distortions which may lead to misjudgement of their contextual performance.