How performance feedback characteristics influence recipients’ reactions: A Review of 64 Scientific Studies

I recently had a chance to read the paper by Jonas Lechermeier and Martin Fassnacht on how performance feedback influences reactions. They performed a comprehensive review of 64 scientific articles.

Here are their main takeaways:

• Employees find supervisor feedback to be “high credibility” vs. peers’

• Feedback is best when the person giving it has “high status and expertise, esp. negative feedback”

And here are some additional takeaways from me:

• Self-feedback provided higher trust and higher recall accuracy

• Co-worker feedback led to more positive behaviors like motivation to perform and better outcomes (vs. the same feedback from supervisors)

• In educational scenarios, teacher feedback was superior to peer feedback

• Chinese participants, when receiving feedback, had higher image defense motives (MacDonald 2013)

• An individual’s desire for feedback was influenced by the feedback giver’s 1) expertise, 2) accessibility, 3) relationship quality, and 4) reward power (Vancouver and Morrison 1995)

• Immediate feedback is better for difficult tasks. Delayed feedback is better for easy tasks. (Clariana 2000)

• People prefer immediate (vs. delayed) feedback (Reid and Parsons 1996)

• Learning-oriented individuals have higher performance with immediate negative feedback. Performance or goal-oriented individuals have lower performance with immediate, negative feedback (Lechermeier and Fassnacht 2017).

• Negative feedback increases motivation and performance in prevention tasks. Positive feedback increases motivation and performance in promotion tasks. (Van-Dijk and Kluger 2011)