The Moderating Effect of Achievement Motive on Performance Feedback in Choices of Challenging Tasks

Successful employee engagement in cognitively challenging tasks is a driving force of performance in modern organizations. Research has shown that performance feedback can be a powerful management control tool to stimulate engagement in such tasks; however, little is known about how individuals with different achievement motive respond to it. This paper examines the main and interactive effects of achievement motive and performance feedback on engagement in tasks that become progressively more challenging. We designed a within-subject experiment deploying an increasingly difficult cognitive task. We find that feedback is a key determinant of engagement in challenging tasks, as the main effect and in the interaction with achievement motive. Failure feedback discourages individuals with low achievement motive more than those with high achievement motive. Success feedback strongly encourages individuals to engage in a challenging task and levels out differences in achievement motive.

Oops!

How many times have you heard that failure is a “teachable moment”? That you learn more from failure than success? In a 2017 commencement speech, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts actually wished the graduating class “bad luck,” so they'd have something to learn from. Yet my colleague Ayelet Fishbach and I find that failure has the opposite effect: It thwarts learning. In a recent study, we presented over 300 telemarketers with a quiz. The telemarketers answered 10 questions on customer service, each with two possible responses (i.e., “How many dollars do U.S. companies spend on customer service each year?” The answer choices: 60 billion or 90 billion). The telemarketers received success feedback on questions they guessed right (“You are correct!”) and failure feedback on the ones they guessed wrong (“You are incorrect!”). However, since each question had just two options, they could have learned the right answer from success or failure.

A Transdiagnostic Application of the Contrast-Avoidance Model: The Effects of Worry and Rumination in a Personal-Failure Paradigm

The contrast-avoidance model (CAM) originally described emotion-regulation patterns in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), proposing that chronic worry maintains negative emotionality, thus attenuating strong shifts into negative emotion (emotional contrasts) as a result of adverse events. Rumination may function similarly in depression, although this proposal requires further research. In this study, we aimed to (a) test the transdiagnostic applicability of the CAM and (b) enhance ecological validity of the CAM using personally relevant in vivo exposures. Participants were assigned to worry, rumination, relaxation, or neutral inductions, then engaged in a challenging task followed by false-negative performance feedback. Relative to baseline, worry and rumination both increased negative emotionality, which significantly reduced emotional contrast in response to failure feedback. Furthermore, participants in the GAD-analogue group experienced prior worry as helpful in coping with failure feedback, and participants in the MDD-analogue group reported rumination as helpful relative to comparison inductions. Overall, findings support the transdiagnostic application of CAM.

Trait Emotional Intelligence Moderates the Impact of Failure Feedback: Out-Group Derogation in Fiji

Two studies investigated the effect of failure feedback, relative to success or no feedback, on the intergroup responses of Fijians of Indian descent (Indo-Fijians, Study 1) and Indigenous Fijians (I-Taukei, Study 2), groups that have a history of intergroup tension, on job suitability ratings of applicants from the negative out-group and from a “neutral” out-group (Asians). For applicants from negative out-groups specifically, compared to participants in the success and no feedback conditions, participants in the failure condition who were low in trait emotional intelligence (TEI) gave poorer negative out-group member suitability ratings. As predicted, TEI moderated the effect of feedback on ratings of the negative out-group member, with participants higher in TEI displaying less negative responding as a function of failure. The moderating impact of TEI on feedback did not occur for candidates from the neutral out-group.

Not Learning From Failure—the Greatest Failure of All

Our society celebrates failure as a teachable moment. Yet in five studies (total N = 1,674), failure did the opposite: It undermined learning. Across studies, participants answered binary-choice questions, following which they were told they answered correctly (success feedback) or incorrectly (failure feedback). Both types of feedback conveyed the correct answer, because there were only two answer choices. However, on a follow-up test, participants learned less from failure feedback than from success feedback. This effect was replicated across professional, linguistic, and social domains—even when learning from failure was less cognitively taxing than learning from success and even when learning was incentivized. Participants who received failure feedback also remembered fewer of their answer choices. Why does failure undermine learning? Failure is ego threatening, which causes people to tune out. Participants learned less from personal failure than from personal success, yet they learned just as much from other people’s failure as from others’ success. Thus, when ego concerns are muted, people tune in and learn from failure.

Designing for mathematical play: failure and feedback

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore three different types of digital environments for mathematics learning that may support mathematical play and the failure and feedback mechanics present in each. Design/methodology/approach Interaction analysis and the lenses of failure, feedback and mathematical play are used to analyze the mathematical interactions afforded by three different digital environments. Findings Each digital environment supports or restrains the potential for mathematical play through mathematical representations, failure and feedback. Originality/value The primary contribution of this paper is to highlight different ways in which digital failure and feedback designs can influence the emergent experience of mathematical play.

Message Framing Influences Perceptions of Feedback (In)directness

Communication varies in indirectness, influencing the effectiveness of the message as well as interpersonal dynamics. However, this issue was not studied empirically in the feedback literature. Integrating communication indirectness and message framing theories, we propose that whether success and failure feedback are framed as a negation (non-losses, non-gains) or affirmation (gains, losses) affects perceived indirectness. Three studies (N=589) consistently showed that both feedback receivers (Studies 1 and 3) and feedback providers (Study 2) viewed feedback in negation (vs. affirmative) frames as more indirect and communicating the feedback signal (positive, negative) less strongly. Feedback providers utilized more negation frames when attempting to be indirect and delivering failure feedback (Study 2). Further, through influencing perceived positivity in feedback, indirectness has downstream effects on feedback providers’ use of frames (Study 2) and feedback receivers’ reactions (Study 3). This work contributes to our understanding of communication indirectness and its potential implications for feedback effectiveness.