Enhancing feedback and improving feedback: subjective perceptions, psychological consequences, behavioral outcomes

Abstract

Three experiments examined subjective perceptions, psychological consequences, and behavioral outcomes of enhancing versus improving feedback. Across experiments, feedback delivery and assessment were sequential (i.e., at each testing juncture) or cumulative (i.e., at the end of the testing session). Although enhancing feedback was seen as more satisfying than useful, and improving feedback was not seen as more useful than satisfying, perceptions differed as a function of short-term versus long-term feedback delivery and assessment. Overall, however, enhancing feedback was more impactful psychologically and behaviorally. Enhancing feedback engendered greater success consistency, overall satisfaction and usefulness, optimism, state selfesteem, perceived ability, and test persistence intentions; improving feedback, on the other hand, engendered greater state improvement. The findings provide fodder for theory development and applications. (Gniewosz, Eccles, & Noack, 2014;Harackiewicz, 1979). It may also influence subsequent responses, including job performance (Brown, Hyatt, & Benson, 2010;Whitaker & Levy, 2012) and educational attainment (Hattie & Timperley, 2007;Kluger & DeNisi, 1996). KeywordsSuch responses, however, may not be what the feedback giver (e.g., manager, teacher) had in mind (Fisher, 1979;Gabriel, Frantz, Levy, & Hilliard, 2014;Kluger & DeNisi, 1996) and may not necessarily be in the recipient's (e.g., employer's, student's) best interest (Gregory & Levy, 2012;Ilgen & Davis, 2000;Kulhavy, 1977). Therefore, understanding how recipients perceive the feedback in the first place is crucial, if well-meaning evaluators wish to shape effectively recipient responding for organizational or educational benefit, or if recipients wish to maximize feedback-derived advantages (Atwater & Brett, 2005;Brett & Atwater, 2001;Hattie & Timperley, 2007). Do recipients, for example, perceive feedback as satisfying or useful?Perceptions of satisfaction and usefulness are arguably prerequisites for recipients to engage with and benefit from feedback. Understanding the psychological consequences and behavioral outcomes of feedback is equally important. How do recipients, for example, feel about and respond to feedback that aims at satisfying them versus improving them? We explore, in this article, comparative perceptions of enhancing and improving feedback, as well as some of its potential psychological consequences (i.e., optimism, state self-esteem, state improvement, perceived ability) and behavioral outcomes (i.e., persistence intentions). Background and ScopeThe bulk of the literature has been concerned with the critical (i.e., negative) versus Little research, however, has addressed another pivotal feedback dimension, enhancing versus improving. For the purposes of our research, enhancing feedback will refer to consistently positive information linked to task performance, whereas improving feedback will refers to an upward information trajectory linked to task performance. How enhancing versus improving feedb...

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