Principle
Hide first scores until everyone has one
A score can become an anchor even when nobody says a word.
When it fits
- Reviewers can see earlier ratings while entering their own.
When to avoid it
- For tasks where later reviewers must build on earlier specialized analysis, strict score independence may be less appropriate than staged information sharing.
Why it matters
Collect initial ratings privately and reveal the distribution only after the submission window closes. Anonymity can reduce status pressure, but timing matters too: later reviewers should not inherit earlier numbers before forming their own view. Preserve identities separately when accountability requires them.
An example
A code-review risk poll collects all ratings before displaying the histogram or senior engineer's score.
Check your result
No participant can name an earlier rating they saw before submitting their own initial judgment.
Keep this limit in mind
- For tasks where later reviewers must build on earlier specialized analysis, strict score independence may be less appropriate than staged information sharing.
Connected ideas
Useful withMake the first judgment before the group talks
Evidence and sources
Workplace judgment research recommends collecting independent judgments before social discussion when the goal is to reduce unwanted variability and influence effects.
Independence is less important when the task genuinely requires shared information before any individual judgment is possible.
Improving Workplace Judgments by Reducing Noise: Lessons Learned from a Century of Selection Research · Independent judgments and aggregation