title: "It's not my fault--but only I can change it": counterfactual and prefactual thoughts of managers.
abstract: In testing for the self-serving bias in performance evaluation, the authors propose that comparing managers' counterfactual and prefactual thoughts about subordinates' performance is more conclusive than the attributional approach and also offers practical advantages. In a study with 120 managers, a 4-way interaction of subordinate performance, temporal perspective, direction, and reference confirmed the predicted pattern. Managers' thoughts about how a weak performance could have been enhanced had external references, but thoughts about how such a performance could be enhanced in the future focused on the leader. This asymmetry was only observed for weak performance. Results are discussed with regard to biases in leaders' performance evaluations and to how counter- and prefactual thoughts could be used for leadership research and practice.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany. martin.goerke@uni-bielefeld.de
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Goerke
authors.forename: Jens
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Moller
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Schulz-Hardt
authors.forename: Uwe
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Napiersky
authors.forename: Dieter
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Frey
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D004650:Employee Performance Appraisal; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007857:Leadership; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009042:Motivation; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D013850:Thinking