Benny, a supervisor, needs to assess Amanda's, a subordinate's, performance. He considers Amanda to be reliable and meets all his requirements, so he rates her as a good performer. But then Benny thinks about an exceptional employee, Christina, in his department, and decides that, compared with her, Amanda is just average. In this way, Benny's rating is a ________ error.

In psychology and usually in recruitment and processes of interviewing candidates for a job, the contrast error is a type of bias that occurs when the evaluation we make of a person is influenced by the impression that the previous persons made on us. In other words, the previous candidates and the impression they made on us set a benchmark that we will use to evaluate the other candidates and therefore, we'll be comparing the latter with the first ones.

In this example, Benny needs to assess Amanda's performance and he rates her as a good performer. However, then Benny thinks about an exceptional employee, Christina, and decides than compared with her, Amanda is just average. We can see that the impression Christina is making on Benny is affecting the evaluation he is making of Amanda's performance since Amanda is setting a higher benchmark (since she is exceptional) that Benny is using to compare Amanda. Therefore, Benny's rating is a contrast error.

In interview or performance appraisal process, error caused by the effect of previously interviewed or appraised applicants on the interviewer. It results in a conscious or subconscious comparison of one applicant with another, and tends to exaggerate the differences between the two.