The rater uses a very narrow range of marks & does not distinguish high & low performance clearly enough

The rater is unsystematic in the standard applied; their marks do not agree with other raters

The rater tends to avoid giving highly positive ratings.

The person being rated has one very positive attribute that causes the rater to evaluate other attributes more positively than deserved; the rating of that one attribute “spills over” to influence the other attributes.

The test-taker being rated has one very negative attribute that causes the rater to evaluate other attributes more negatively than warranted.

Because the person being rated is perceived to belong to a particular group (for example, female, Hispanic, a teacher, a doctor, etc.), the rater assumes that the test-taker possesses all the stereotypic traits associated with that group and allows these assumptions to color the rating of the person.

The rater remembers best what has happened most recently and allows these recent recollections to unduly influence the ratings, rather than taking into account performance over the entire performance period.

Because the test-taker being rated shares some attribute with the rater (e.g., both are fans of a football team, wear similar fashions, enjoy the same music, etc.), the rater rates the person more favorably.

The rater allows a single negative event to influence the perception of a test-taker’s performance, even long after the event has passed into history.

The rater evaluates the person based on comparisons with other test-takers, past or present, rather than basing the evaluation on the test-taker’s actual performance.