Bearing Bad News: Reactions to Negative Performance Feedback

Knowledge of results plays a major role in almost all learning and motivational theories of task performance. Central to all these is the belief that it is necessary to feed back to employees information about the degree to which they have or have not met performance standards. In particular, information about performance that falls short of the standard (typically termed negative feedback) is a necessary but not sufficient condition for corrective action. However, reactions to negative feedback frequently do not produce the desired effect of improving performance even in cases where the person is capable of better performance. This article presents a model of negative feedback incorporating situational and individual characteristics that appear to impact motivation to respond to negative feedback.