“Just letting you know … ” Underestimating others’ desire for constructive feedback.

Abstract

People sometimes avoid giving feedback to others even when it would help fix others' problems. For example, only 2.6% of individuals in a pilot field study provided feedback to a survey administrator who had food or lipstick on their face. Five experiments (N = 1,984) identify a possible reason for the lack of feedback: People underestimate how much others want to receive constructive feedback. Initial experiments demonstrated this underestimation of others' desire for feedback in hypothetical scenarios (Experiment 1), recalled feedback experiences (Experiment 2), and real-time feedback among friends (Experiment 3). We further examine how people ascertain others' desire for feedback, testing how much they consider the potential consequences of feedback for themselves (e.g., discomfort giving feedback or harm to their relationship with the receiver) or the receiver (e.g., discomfort receiving feedback or value from feedback). While we found evidence that people consider both types of consequences, people particularly underestimated how much receivers value their feedback, a mechanism not extensively tested in prior research. Specifically, in Experiment 4, two interventions-making feedback-givers consider receivers' perspectives (enhancing consideration of receivers' consequences) or imagine someone else providing feedback (reducing consideration of givers' consequences)both improved givers' recognition of others' desire for feedback compared to no intervention, but the perspective-taking intervention was most effective. Finally, Experiment 5 demonstrates the underestimation during a financially incentivized public-speaking contest and shows that giving less constructive feedback resulted in less improvement in feedback-receivers' performances. Overall, people consistently underestimate others' desire for feedback, with potentially negative consequences for feedback-receivers' outcomes.

Revisiting the Moral Forecasting Error – A Preregistered Replication and Extension of “Are We More Moral Than We Think?”

“…This moral forecasting error presumably reflects an affective forecasting error: People might underestimate the emotional activation they experience when facing a moral shortcut that "feels wrong", and therefore also mispredict their actions. The study first reporting this effect was published in Psychological Science by Teper, Inzlicht, and Page-Gould (2011), and is part of a growing literature on the fascinating relationship between forecasting errors and behavior (Abi-Esber et al, 2022;Kumar & Epley, 2018;Morewedge & Buechel, 2013). The current study proposal is a pre-registered direct replication of the moral forecasting error (Teper et al, 2011).…”

Lying is sometimes ethical, but honesty is the best policy: The desire to avoid harmful lies leads to moral preferences for unconditional honesty.

“…However, this prosocially motivated communicator may be biased in their assessment about whether the target could learn, leading them to lie to the target, when the truth would have actually been more beneficial. Indeed, paternalistic beliefs and self-other perspective gaps lead people to underestimate the benefits and overestimate the harm associated with truth-telling in feedback settings and beyond (Abel et al, 2022; Abi-Esber et al, 2022; Levine & Cohen, 2018; Lupoli et al, 2018). Communicators could also be conditionally honest for politeness (Brown et al, 1987), conflict-avoidance (DePaulo et al, 1996) or impression-management (Goffman, 1955) reasons, and end up telling lies that are harmful to targets, despite the communicator not having harmful intentions.…”

Exploring Interview Dynamics in Hiring Process: Structure, Response Bias, and Interviewee Experience

“…After the interview, high-quality feedback to interviewees can also help them continue to grow and build their personal capacity, which helps the organization to develop even better talent in the future. Hardavella et al mentioned that feedback is an invaluable instrument that individuals may utilize to acquire knowledge, enhance their understanding of their own strengths and areas for growth, and ultimately facilitate the development of beneficial behaviors [34]. In spite of the prevalent utilization of interviews in prominent recruitment initiatives, interviewers frequently fail to adequately acknowledge or diminish the significance of providing feedback to the interviewee.…”