Feedback with feeling? How emotional language in feedback affects individual performance

Abstract

Our study examines the influence of manager emotion on the effectiveness of feedback in motivating performance. Feedback Intervention Theory (Kluger & DeNisi,1996) suggests that feedback cues can shift feedback recipients’ attention away from the implications of the feedback for the task and toward the implications for the self. We propose that negative emotional language from a manager acts as a feedback cue directing employees’ attention more toward the self, and therefore, reduces employee effort in response to negative feedback. Consistent with our prediction, we find that negative emotional language decreases employee performance in response to negative feedback. In contrast, positive emotional language has no effect on employee performance in response to positive feedback. In two additional experiments, we provide triangulating evidence – via moderation-of-process and direct measurement – supporting our proposed mechanism, i.e., that the effect of negative emotional language on performance occurs by shifting individuals’ attention away from the task and toward the self. In doing so, we also show that managers can attenuate the effect of negative emotional language on subsequent performance by emphasizing that feedback relates to the task and not the self. Our study identifies a novel feedback intervention cue and provides corroborating evidence of Feedback Intervention Theory. Overall, our findings suggest that managers should consider how expressions of emotion accompanying feedback affect employee attention and subsequent performance.