Occurrence of rating distortions and ratees’ fairness perceptions per raters’ mood and affect

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the occurrence of rating distortions under raters’ different mood conditions and at different levels of interpersonal affect of raters towards ratees, and further its association with ratees’ perceptions of distributive and interpersonal fairness. Design/methodology/approach For the scenario-based experiment, the study recruited 110 undergraduate students as participants. Of them, 22 raters appraised the video-taped buyer-seller negotiation performance of 88 ratees. Repeated measures analysis was employed to analyse data. Findings Results revealed that under different mood conditions (pleasant and sad) and at different levels of interpersonal affect towards ratees (high and low), raters distorted ratings (inflated and deflated, respectively). These rating distortions shaped ratees fairness perceptions in such a way that ratees who received inflated ratings due to raters’ pleasant mood and high interpersonal affect perceived more distributive and interpersonal fairness than ratees who received deflated ratings due to raters’ sad mood and low interpersonal affect. Originality/value The paper is a step towards integrating the affect infusion model with distributive and interpersonal fairness theory. This integration can be of value for enhancing our understanding of how rater-centric rating errors take place, which subsequently shape ratees’ fairness perceptions.