How AI negative feedback shapes employee appraisals and job crafting

Artificial intelligence increasingly delivers workplace performance feedback, but responses to AI-delivered negative feedback remain unclear. Drawing on cognitive appraisal theory, we examine how feedback source is associated with job crafting through challenge and hindrance appraisals and whether these relationships depend on performance goal orientation. Study 1, a scenario experiment with 406 working participants, found that AI-delivered negative feedback elicited stronger challenge appraisal among employees high in performance-approach goal orientation and stronger hindrance appraisal among those high in performance-avoidance goal orientation. The corresponding conditional indirect effects on promotion-focused and prevention-focused job crafting were significant. Study 2, a daily experience sampling study of 1,953 negative feedback episodes nested within 280 employees, replicated these patterns. The findings show that AI-delivered negative feedback is neither uniformly constructive nor threatening; its associations with job crafting depend on employees’ appraisals and goal orientations. This study clarifies when and how AI-based evaluation is associated with employee job crafting.