When Ignoring Negative Feedback Is Functional: Presenting a Model of Motivated Feedback Disengagement

Abstract

Contrary to popular belief, negative feedback occasionally hinders performance improvements. Investigations targeting this feedback-performance gap usually rest on two assumptions: (a) Feedback recipients want to improve their performance (have an improvement goal), and (b) feedback recipients engage with the negative feedback. We argue that people sometimes disengage from negative feedback for hedonic-goal attainment (to feel good). To explain such functional feedback disengagement, we conceptualize feedback processing from an emotion-regulation perspective, the model of motivated feedback disengagement. We posit that feedback-induced negative affect may render hedonic goals more salient than improvement goals, motivating emotion regulation. After forming the intention to regulate their emotions, feedback recipients select and implement an emotion-regulation strategy. We consider two common engagement strategies (reappraisal and feedback focus) and two common disengagement strategies (distraction and feedback removal). These strategies differentially impact recipients’ affect and feedback processing. Strategy-, person-, and situation-related factors influence strategy choice. Feedback processing is cyclical and dynamically unfolds over time. The model provides novel directions for future investigations and practical implications for stakeholders in negative-feedback contexts.

Perception and Learning of Other People’s Trustworthiness: Comparison Between Older and Younger Adults

“…Less striatal activity for impression-incongruent versus -congruent feedback was observed in older participants, which was related to memory failure. As receiving impression-congruent information is rewarding whereas receiving impression-incongruent information is punishing, people can be motivated to disregard the latter information when they have a hedonic goal to maintain or enhance positive feelings (Grundmann et al, 2021). Literature on socioemotional selectivity theory proposes that the hedonic goal becomes more salient with advancing age, and that older adults pay more attention to the emotional meaning of information than younger adults (Carstensen, 2006;Carstensen et al, 1999;Mather & Carstensen, 2005).…”

“…In contrast, impression-incongruent information is punishing since it conveys to recipients that they are low in social cognitive ability, which may lead to a striatal deactivation (Seymour et al, 2015). Thus, people can be motivated to disengage from the processing of impression-incongruent information to attain the hedonic goal of "feeling good right now" (Grundmann et al, 2021). However, a central aspect of trustworthiness learning is to update the initial perceptual impression of someone's trustworthiness when receiving information contradicting that impression.…”

“…This can be observed as age-related differences in the activity of reward-related brain regions (Bhanji & Delgado, 2014;Seymour et al, 2015). In addition, considering the human motivation to attain the hedonic goal (Grundmann et al, 2021), older adults may disengage from the processing of impression-incongruent information due to enhanced perception of its punishing properties. This can result in poor performance on trustworthiness learning.…”

Performance, Well-Being, Motivation, and Identity in an Age of Abundant Data: Introduction to the “Well-Measured Life” Special Issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science

“…For the Measured Individual motivational messages like "You're doing great; keep it up," and challenges to push performance beyond current levels. Accordingly, effective automatic personal trainers of the future will need to adapt their feedback to their users, who will typically be weighing the goal to improve against the goal to feel good about themselves now (Grundmann et al, 2020).…”

Reinforcement sensitivity predicts affective psychopathology via emotion regulation: Cross-sectional, longitudinal and quasi-experimental evidence

“…Reappraisal consists of engaging with the troubling emotion, and tends to be preferred with lower-intensity emotions, while suppression, which focuses on disengagement, is used more often in the face of higher-intensity emotions (Gross, 2015;Grundmann et al, 2020;Ochsner & Gross, 2008;Rood et al, 2012;Sheppes et al, 2014). For this reason, many studies of emotion regulation in the context of clinical individual differences find it necessary to incorporate comparable strategies such as reappraisal and rumination, that are similarly engaging, but with opposingly valenced interpretative biases (e.g., Denson et al, 2012;Everaert & Joormann, 2019;Millgram et al, 2019;Ray et al, 2005).…”