Why Participant Perceptions of Assessment Center Exercises Matter: Justice, Motivation, Self‐Efficacy, and Performance

ABSTRACT Despite expectations, assessment center (AC) participants' performance ratings often are not strongly correlated over AC exercises. Why is a puzzle? Perhaps one piece of the puzzle is that participants view AC exercises with varying levels of motivation, justice, and self‐efficacy, which relate to exercise performance, the topic of the current research. Based on 123 participants completing an AC consisting of six exercises (two leaderless group discussions, oral presentation, written case analysis, personality assessment, and cognitive ability exercise), results showed that motivation, self‐efficacy, and procedural justice levels differed among exercises, which generally related to exercise performance. Two interventions designed to improve how participants perceive AC exercises (one focusing on self‐efficacy and the other on justice) were not successful. Implications are discussed.