What performance appraisal bias occurs when raters score all employees near the middle of the evaluation scale to avoid making extreme positive or negative judgements?

Explanation

• Central Tendency Error occurs when raters give average or midpoint ratings to all candidates, failing to differentiate high performers from low performers.
• Leniency error rates everyone too high; Strictness error rates everyone too low.
• Forced distribution methods (e.g., bell-curve ranking) are often used to eliminate central tendency bias.