Performance Feedback

Feedback is a subset of the available information in the work environment that indicates how well individuals are meeting their goals. Feedback serves a variety of purposes, including guiding, motivating, and reinforcing effective behaviors while discouraging ineffective ones. Feedback is a complex stimulus entailing a process in which a sender conveys a message to a recipient regarding personal behavior at work. The presence of feedback triggers psychological processes that precede behavioral responses. Daniel R. Ilgen and colleagues outlined how psychological processes, such as recipients’ perceptions of feedback, acceptance of feedback, desire to respond to feedback, and intended responses, are influenced by such factors as the recipient’s own characteristics, such as individual differences; characteristics of the source, including credibility; and characteristics of the feedback message, for ...