Blackwell Reference Online

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Feedback refers to information a person receives about his or her performance or behavior. This may include some evaluation, or it may simply indicate the level of performance or the nature of the behavior. Feedback may be intrinsic to the task at hand, or it may require some external source. Feedback may or may not include information on how to improve performance, but it is most effective when such information is included. For many years, it was assumed that performance feedback generally facilitated performance improvements, especially when that feedback was positive. Much of what we knew or believed to be true was based on the conclusions from a major review of the feedback literature conducted by Ammons (1956) . But, by the 1970s, a number of scholars were arguing that reactions to feedback were more complex than had been suspected. For example, Herold and Greller (1977) noted that reactions to feedback were dependent, to a large extent, upon the credibility of the source of the feedback, and the psychological closeness of that source. Soon afterwards, a very influential theoretical paper ( Ilgen, Fisher and Taylor, 1979 ) outlined a series of issues that were proposed to influence feedback effectiveness, emphasizing both the source of the feedback and the sign of the feedback. Specifically, these authors noted that there were mechanisms through which recipients could discount ... log in or subscribe to read full text