Why Experience Alone Leads to Judgement Mistakes (and what you can do about it!)

The Lens We See Through

Psychologists use something called the Brunswik Lens Model to explain how people make judgments. Imagine this: You’re not seeing people directly, you’re seeing cues (like eye contact, confidence, enthusiasm), which act as "lenses" that shape your perception.

But:

• Are those cues valid? (Do they actually reflect competence?)
• How much weight are you giving them? (And is that influence appropriate?)

Research shows we’re generally better at interpreting simple cues, but the workplace is full of complex, conflicting cues, and that makes accurate judgment harder than we think!

Two Common Mistakes in Judgment

Implicit Beliefs

We often overweight subjective impressions—like charisma or extroversion—and undervalue structured assessments like test scores or structured interviews. Why? Because of two common (and false) beliefs:

• That we can get near-perfect precision in predicting success.
• That intuition improves with experience when judging human behavior.

But decades of I-O psychology research say otherwise: most of what drives performance can’t be predicted at the point of hire or initial assessment. In fact, about 70% of success is influenced by things we can’t measure up front.

The Myth of Expertise

Extensive research shows that experience doesn’t improve predictive accuracy. This is counterintuitive, so take a moment to process that, reflecting on your own beliefs on this.

Professionals like clinicians, auditors, and business leaders:

• Use only a few cues (often inconsistently)
• Can’t explain their process
• And become more confident—not more accurate—when given irrelevant information.

This is reinforced by society, where socially, we still value "gut feeling" over formulas, even when the data tells us we shouldn't.

So What Can You Do?

Improving your judgments doesn’t require giving up experience, it requires anchoring it in structure and self-awareness:

• Awareness—Write down your biases and any resistance you feel toward formal assessment methods. Share and compare with a colleague.
• Pre-establish how different sources of information will be weighted (e.g., formal assessments vs. informal impressions).
• Use structured tools, like structured and behavioral interviews along with scoring rubrics (link to other SP blog post).
• Interrogate your first impression—Be aware of why you developed that impression and ask yourself how it could be wrong.
• Humility—Bring in other raters. Is there inter-judge agreement? If not, why?

The bottom line is to trust your experience, but verify it with science. And if you’re really struggling, prioritize the data. The best leaders don’t just make decisions, they get better at making them. Hope this helps.

Read more on employee selection methods here.

References:
Highhouse, S. (2008). Stubborn reliance on intuition and subjectivity in employee selection. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1(333-342).

Highhouse, S., Dalal, R. S., & Salas, E. (2014). Judgment and decision making at work. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.