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Biased, not blind: An experimental test of self‐serving biases in service users’ evaluations of performance information
Author(s) -
Christensen Julian
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
public administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.313
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1467-9299
pISSN - 0033-3298
DOI - 10.1111/padm.12520
Subject(s) - pessimism , meaning (existential) , test (biology) , service (business) , service provider , public service , psychology , actuarial science , social psychology , computer science , applied psychology , marketing , economics , business , public relations , political science , paleontology , philosophy , epistemology , psychotherapist , biology
Based on literature about motivated reasoning, this article proposes that choosing a public service provider from among competing options may bias service users in a positive direction when evaluating the performance of their chosen provider. Users are expected to defend their choice through processes of goal reprioritization, meaning that they will alter the weight they assign to given pieces of information depending on the (in)convenience of that information. This article uses nine experimental studies to test this expectation on students who had recently chosen to study at one university instead of competing universities. As expected, findings show signs of biases in students’ evaluations, but the biases are small and not consistently significant. Thus, prior research may have been too pessimistic regarding the general potential of performance information in the public sector.