Effects of raters' self-consciousness and appraisal purpose on leniency and accuracy were examined in a factorially designed experiment. Following administration of the self-consciousness scale to 105 undergraduates, 46 subjects who scored as high-private and 59 subjects who scored as high-public evaluated subordinates for merit raise or training purpose from scenarios. When the appraisal purpose was merit raise, publicly self-conscious raters were more lenient and inaccurate than privately self-conscious raters, but ratings of the two groups did not differ when those ratings were obtained for training purposes.
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