Do Evaluations Rise with Experience

Sequential evaluation is the hallmark of fair review: the same raters assess the merits of applicants, athletes, art, and more using standard criteria. We investigate one important potential contaminant in such ubiquitous decisions: evaluations become more positive when conducted later in a sequence. In four studies, (1) judges’ ratings of professional dance competitors rise across twenty seasons of a popular television series, (2) university professors give higher grades when the same course is offered multiple times, and (3) in an experimental test of our hypotheses, evaluations of randomized short stories become more positive over a two-week sequence. As judges complete repeated evaluations, they experience more fluent decision-making, producing more positive judgments (Study 4 mediation). This seemingly simple bias has widespread and impactful consequences for evaluations of all kinds. We also report four supplementary studies to bolster our findings and address alternative explanations.