Making negative feedback more acceptable: The effect of self-focused vs. task-focused feedback on employees’ feedback reactions

SUMMARY Negative feedback can induce adverse responses. This is problematic in auditing as negative feedback is common during workpaper reviews, and auditors’ follow-through on this feedback is essential to staff development and audit quality. Psychology research suggests supervisors’ framing of feedback can impact subordinates’ feedback reactions and subsequent performance, and this effect might vary depending on their relative receptivity to feedback (i.e., feedback orientation). In a 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment, using a review notes task, I examine the joint influence of these factors and find divergent effects. Results show novice auditors with stronger feedback orientations have more positive reactions to negative feedback when reviewers emphasize learning goals, but framing does not influence performance. However, those with weaker feedback orientations react poorly regardless of framing, but learning goals improve their performance. These results enhance understanding of effects of goal framing on audit quality and help guide reviewers on how to frame negative feedback. JEL Classifications: M40; M42.

As organizational structures have become more flat, firms are increasing the use of peer reviews as a performance monitoring tool. Research suggests that the effectiveness of performance feedback, particularly negative feedback, depends on the feedback source and the recipient's sense of psychological entitlement. We conduct an experiment wherein we manipulate the valence and source level of performance feedback and examine how psychological entitlement moderates the effect of feedback on subsequent performance. We find that when providing negative performance feedback, the effect of feedback source on performance is moderated by the level of psychological entitlement of the feedback recipient. Specifically, relative to peer feedback, the effectiveness of feedback from a superior increases with the feedback recipient's entitlement. We also find that psychological entitlement and source level do not affect responses to positive feedback. Our results suggest that companies should encourage supervisors to deliver negative performance feedback, particularly to psychologically entitled employees.

Endocrine disruptors have been present in our environment since the tide of stable, man-made chemicals of the Industrial Age arose. As it has turned out, one of the medicaments used in my studies, diethylstilboestrol (DES), is also a very potent endocrine disruptor. These field trials took place a long time ago, in the 1960s, when the use of this kind of treatment was still authorized in the veterinary medical practice in order to hormonally castrate fattening female pigs instead of the traditional surgical intervention. Diethylstilboestrol (DES) was then suggested to be administered to pigs for this purpose. However, now DES must not be administered to food animals at all. The result of the hormonal treatment of pigs was then believed to be a consequence of a negative feedback reaction. Nevertheless, thorough investigations found that the induced reaction was not a negative, but on the contrary, a positive feedback reaction. In the meantime it came to light that the medicament DES itself is a most potent endocrine disruptor. Later it became clear that this positive feedback reaction could be regarded as the manifestation of the significant protective effect of the corpus luteum function, the organism’s own, natural shield aimed at preventing certain disrupting factors. This seems to be a promising domain worthy of doing research on.

The conversion of protein C into activated protein C (APC) by the thrombin-thrombomodulin complex on the surface of endothelial cells initiates an essential negative feedback reaction on blood coagulation. APC, together with its non-enzymic cofactor protein S, inactivates factors Va and VIIIa, the non-enzymic protein cofactors of the prothrombinase and intrinsic tenase complex, by proteolytic degradation. In this study we report that prothrombin activation products, generated by the prothrombinase complex on the surface of quiescent endothelial cells, are able to activate protein C. Subsequent inactivation of factor Va by the APC that was formed decreased the rate of prothrombin activation, thus demonstrating in vitro the negative feedback loop on coagulation factor activation. The anticoagulant feedback reaction of APC on the prothrombinase complex was stimulated 3-4-fold by the addition of protein S but not by thrombin-cleaved protein S or by protein S complexed with C4b-binding protein. Stimulation of endothelial cells with 50 pM tumour necrosis factor (TNF) or 500 pM interleukin 1 (IL-1) resulted in a 70% decrease in activation of protein C by exogenously added alpha-thrombin, which seemed to be due to down-regulation of thrombomodulin activity on the surface of endothelial cells. However, when prothrombin activation products generated in situ were allowed to activate protein C, stimulation of endothelial cells with TNF and IL-1 resulted in only a 25% decrease in activation of protein C. Stimulation with TNF or IL-1 did not affect the ability of endothelial cells to support prothrombinase activity. We investigated whether the differences in extent of protein C activation by exogenously added alpha-thrombin and by prothrombin activation products generated in situ were due to meizothrombin formed during prothrombin activation. Previous reports from our groups revealed that meizothrombin is generated as a transient intermediate during prothrombin activation on phospholipid vesicles and endothelial cells. Here we show that meizothrombin is at least a 6-fold better activator of protein C on the surface of endothelial cells than is alpha-thrombin. These results demonstrate that meizothrombin, formed during the initial phase of prothrombin activation, efficiently down-regulates both its own formation and that of thrombin.

Feedback Effects in the Acquisition of a Hierarchical Skill

Eukaryotic transcription involves the synergistic interaction of many different proteins. However, the question remains how eukaryotic promoters achieve ultrasensitive or threshold responses to changes in the concentration or activity of a single transcription factor (TF). We show theoretically that by recruiting a histone-modifying enzyme, a TF binding non-cooperatively to a single site can change the balance between opposing positive feedback loops in histone modification to produce a large change in gene expression in response to a small change in concentration of the TF. This mechanism can also generate bistable promoter responses, allowing a gene to be on in some cells and off in others, despite the cells being in identical conditions. In addition, the system provides a simple means by which the activities of many TFs could be integrated at a promoter.

Synthetic Peptide Substrate Assays for Hemostasis Testing

The Effect of Positive and Negative Verbal Feedback on Surgical Skills Performance and Motivation

Previous research on reputation systems primarily focused on their trust-building function. The present research addresses their trust-rebuilding function-specifically, the role of the short text comments given in reaction to negative feedback. Rebuilding trust is often necessary because on-line markets are noisy environments. The results of two experimental studies of eBay users show that trustworthiness judgments are influenced by the text comments accompanying negative feedback and also by whether a trust violation is perceived as competence-based or morality-based. Plain apologies were more successful than denials in repairing trust. These effects were mediated by the perceived believability of the comments. Thus, to avoid the detrimental effect of noise on trust, operators of on-line marketplaces should encourage text feedback comments and reactions.

At the cellular level, networks of coupled biochemical reactions underlie all functions - from cell cycle to development. These reactions control and co-ordinate the cellular functions through regulated activities of the genetic and metabolic reactions in a highly repeatable manner, in the face of uncertain external and noisy internal environment [1]. The co-ordinated behaviour exhibited by the cell in response to a variety of signals and perturbations is achieved through various regulatory interactions involving both short and long range feedback loops of the positive and negative type. The cell is quite flexible in its use of types of regulation and uses various combinations of feedback processes for such activities. Nested feedback loops are frequently seen in amino acid biosynthetic pathways, where a single common precursor can lead to the synthesis of more than one amino acid [2]. Living systems seem to have taken advantage of the variability in functional dynamics emerging from a few common components by simply connecting them in different ways. Given the predominance of negative feedback processes and reaction pathways with low connectivity observed in both metabolic and transcriptional regulatory pathways in, E. coli., [3,4], we have studied the canonical three-step single negative feedback system with end product inhibition and compared it to a structurally more complex system in terms of an additional negative feedback. The results of this study of the different topologies of feedback processes, in isolation as well as when they are interacting with each other, show the type of dynamics attainable by these designs under various genetic and biochemical alterations of the pathway. We also evaluate the response of the pathway to perturbation in the end product concentration in order to judge the robustness of the dynamics in that particular topology. Our approach could be a possible way of studying regulation in cellular processes and arriving at a set of minimal designs adopted by nature.

Learning goal orientation buffers the effects of negative normative feedback on test self-efficacy and reattempt interest

Applicant reactions to selection events: Effects of feedback, fairness, and attributions Applicant reactions to selection events: Effects of feedback, fairness, and attributions Despite the growing attention for the impact of selection procedures and outcomes on applicants, little is yet known about the factors that may influence these relationships. The general findings of a recent doctoral dissertation are presented in this article. The research in this dissertation was directed at investigating the separate and combined influences of selection feedback, fairness perceptions, and attributions on a diversity of applicant reactions: well-being, self-evaluations and perceptions of the organization. Based on four empirical studies it is shown that feedback and fairness do not merely have a positive influence on applicant reactions, and that attributional style plays an important role in the formation of reactions. Therefore, both organizations and applicants may benefit from more reflection on selection feedback and fairness by researchers and practitioners alike.

This research explored the persuasive effects on behavior of social feedback by a robotic agent. In two experiments, participants could save on energy while carrying out washing tasks on a simulated washing machine. In both experiments, we tested the persuasive effects of positive and negative social feedback and we compared these effects to factual feedback, which is more widely used. Results of both studies indicated that social feedback had stronger persuasive effects than factual feedback. Furthermore, results of both studies suggested an effect of feedback valence indicated by more economic behavior following negative feedback (social or factual) as compared to positive feedback. Overall, the strongest persuasive effects were exerted by negative social feedback. In addition, results of Experiment 2 indicated that task similarity increased the persuasive effects of negative feedback. The implications for persuasive robotic agent theory and design are discussed.

The purpose of this online study was to examine the effectiveness of concurrent positive and negative visual feedback on the performance of a rotary-pursuit task. One hundred and nine physical education students were randomly assigned to three groups: a positive feedback group (n = 37), a negative feedback group (n = 35), and a control group (no feedback; n = 37). The students participated from their own home computers and performed an easy, moderate, and difficult rotary-pursuit task. On Day 1, the participants performed a pre-test with no feedback and practiced eight trials of each level of difficulty with the assigned feedback. On Day 2, they practiced eight trials of each level of difficulty again. On Day 3, they practiced eight trials of each level of difficulty with feedback and performed a post-test with no feedback. Finally, the participants were asked to report their subjective assessment of the task difficulty. The main findings were that in the task of moderate difficulty, negative feedback led to the best performance during practice. In addition, regardless of the difficulty level, practicing with negative feedback led to the best performance in the post-test. The results suggest that task difficulty moderates the effects of feedback on performance and that providing concurrent negative visual feedback in a continuous task may be more advantageous.

Signal recognition and chemoelectrical transduction in olfaction