According to a study led by the American Psychological Association, people tend to underestimate others’ desire for constructive feedback and therefore do not provide it, even though it may improve another person’s performance on a task. The study was published in the journal ‘Journal of Personality and Social Psychology’.
“People often have opportunities to provide constructive feedback to others that can be helpful immediately, whether it’s telling someone about a typo in their presentation before a client presentation, or to a job candidate before an interview. Telling about a stained shirt,” said lead author Nicole Abi-Esber, a doctoral candidate at Harvard Business School.
“Overall, our research found that people consistently underestimate others’ desire for feedback, which can have harmful consequences for the feedback recipients,” he said. According to the researchers, constructive feedback is important to aid learning and performance and people generally crave this type of feedback.
However, despite wanting constructive feedback themselves, people often avoid giving it to others. In a pilot study conducted by researchers, only 2.6 percent of participants informed an examiner about visible haze on her face (eg, chocolate, lipstick or red marker) during a survey. Previous research suggested that people avoid responding for fear of negative consequences, such as being embarrassed or upset by the other person.
Abi-Esber and his colleagues theorize that there may be another reason for people to withdraw their response. They did not fully recognize the potential of their input to improve the outcomes of others, causing them to underestimate others’ willingness to respond to such.
To test their theory, the researchers conducted a series of five experiments involving 1,984 participants to measure how much people underestimated others’ desire for constructive feedback.
In one, participants were presented with 10 hypothetical awkward social situations at work, where they could either give or receive constructive feedback. In another experiment, participants were asked to recall a situation where they could either give or receive constructive feedback. In the final experiment, participants were paired, with one practicing speech for a contest and the other assigned to listen and respond.
In all five experiments, people consistently underestimated the potential receiver’s willingness to respond to it. The more consequential the feedback (for example, telling someone they need to improve their presentation skills), the more likely participants are to underestimate the other’s need for feedback and the less likely they are to take it. Will present.
The difference was smaller in more, less consequential scenarios every day, such as when the other person had food in their face or there was a rag in their pants. The researchers were surprised to find that the simple intervention of perspective-taking can increase one’s chances of recognizing a need and providing feedback.
Just to ask people to reflect immediately, “If you were this person, would you want feedback?” Participants were helped to recognize the value of feedback to the other person and help close the donor-receiver gap. “Even if you feel hesitant to give feedback, we recommend that you give it,” Abi-Esber said.
“Take a second and imagine that you are in the other person’s shoes and ask yourself if you would want a response if you were them. Most likely you would, and that feeling may help empower you to respond to them. can help,” he said.
“Feedback is the key to personal growth and improvement, and it can fix problems that are otherwise costly for the recipient,” said co-author Francesca Gino, PhD, of Harvard Business School.
“The next time you hear someone misspelling a word, see a stain on their shirt or see a typo on their slide, we urge you to point it out — they’re probably more likely than you think.” want feedback,” he concluded.
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