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.
a. distributional.
b. contrast.
c. horns.
d. leniency.
e. halo.

Contrast error occurs during the performance evaluation of an employee, whereby the evaluation or appraisal of the employee is affected by the fact that the previous employees or co-workers were relatively good or bad. It is a rating error in evaluation of an individual, in which the level of performance of that individual or group is affected by the level of performance of another individual or group. In this case, Amanda was rated average by Benny because of how excellent Christina is. Amanda was set to get a higher performance rating Benny did not compare her performance to that of Christina.