Development of a model of the feedback process within executive coaching.

Recent literature concerning executive coaching consistently points out the need for a better conceptual understanding of the process of coaching. The current paper addresses this need with an emphasis on the role of feedback in executive coaching. Several existing models of the coaching process mention feedback as an important element, but none expand on the role and function of feedback in executive coaching relationships. This paper builds on several existing models of executive coaching and integrates London and Smither's (2002) model of the feedback process to create a model of feedback in executive coaching. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

It's not me, it's you: A multilevel examination of variables that impact employee coaching relationships.

Employee coaching, which we consider to be a critical part of the performance management process, is coaching done by a manager or supervisor with his or her direct reports. The current article builds on recent research on the importance of the employee coaching relationship by investigating individual difference and contextual variables that contribute to the quality of employee coaching relationships. The study uses a multilevel modeling approach to test the effects of such variables as supervisor leadership style, emotional intelligence, empathy, implicit person theory, trust, and feedback environment on employees' perceptions of the coaching relationships they share with their supervisors. Overall, supervisors' individual consideration, empathy, trust, and the feedback environment all accounted for significant variance in employees' evaluations of coaching relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Manipulating Subjective Expectancy Through Feedback: A Laboratory Study of the Expectancy-Performance Relationship": Correction to Janz.

Reports an error in the original article by Janz (Journal of Applied Psychology. Vol 67(4) Aug 1982, 480-485). On page 481 and 484, the numbers of subjects in some places were reported incorrectly. The corrections are provided. (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1982-29612-001.) Investigated the form of the expectancy-performance relationship in a laboratory study of the performance of 132 undergraduates on a simple clerical task. As feedback after each of 8 trials, Ss were told that their performance was better, worse, or borderline. Ss recorded their subjective expectancies before each trial. Over all Ss, feedback condition had no impact on performance; but when 39 Ss whose reported expectancy did not match their assigned feedback were eliminated, a strong expectancy-performance relationship emerged. Ss having intermediate expectancy outperformed those whose expectancy was low or high. Examination of the nonbelievers supported the mediating role of cognitive variables in deciding how hard to work at this task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Effect of Feedback Sign on Task Performance Depends on Self-Concept Discrepancies.

Control theories claim that information about performance is often used by multiple goal systems. A proposition tested here was that performance information can create discrepancies in self-concept goals, directing cognitive resources away from the task goal system. To manipulate performance information, 160 undergraduates were given false positive or false negative normative feedback while working on a task that did or did not require substantial cognitive resources. Half of the participants were then given an opportunity to reaffirm their self-concepts following feedback, whereas half were not. Feedback sign positively related to performance only for those working on the cognitively intense task and not given a chance to reaffirm. Otherwise, feedback sign was negatively related to performance, albeit weakly. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Robust GEFA Assessment of Climate Feedback to SST EOF Modes

Atmospheric response to SST variability was estimated using generalized equilibrium feedback analysis (GEFA) in the SST EOF space with synthesis data from an idealized climate model.Results show that the GEFA atmospheric response to the leading SST EOF modes is much more accurate and robust than the GEFA feedback matrix in physical space.Therefore,GEFA provides a practical method for assessing atmospheric response to large-scale SST anomalies in terms of the leading EOFs.     

A self-awareness model of the causes and effects of alcohol consumption.

Proposed a model of alcohol consumption based on the premise that alcohol serves to decrease an individual's level of self-awareness. According to this analysis, alcohol interferes with encoding processes fundamental to a state of self-awareness, thereby decreasing the individual's sensitivity to both the self-relevance of cues regarding appropriate forms of behavior and the self-evaluative nature of feedback about past behaviors. Insofar as the latter form of information can provide a source of self-criticism and negative affect, alcohol as an inhibitor of self-aware processing is thought to provide a source of psychological relief. It is concluded that the self-awareness-based model establishes a useful framework within which a broad base of alcohol's cognitive, affective, and social behavioral effects and insight to the motivations behind drinking can be conceived. (95 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Abnormal neural response to feedback on planning and guessing tasks in patients with unipolar depression

BACKGROUND: It has been suggested that patients with unipolar depression show abnormal responses to negative feedback in the performance of cognitive tasks. Positron emission tomography (PET) has previously identified blood flow abnormalities in depressed patients during cognitive performance. We have also used PET to identify regions where there is differential neural response to performance feedback in normal volunteers. In this study we aimed to test the hypothesis that blood flow in these regions, the medial caudate and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, would be abnormal in depressed patients. METHODS: Six patients with unipolar depression and six matched controls were scanned using PET while performing cognitive tasks in the presence and absence of feedback. RESULTS: Compared with controls, depressed patients failed to show significant activation in the medial caudate and ventromedial orbitofrontal cortex. Blood flow was lower and a differential response, observed in normals, under different task and feedback conditions was not seen in the patients. DISCUSSION: The findings suggest that the behavioural response to feedback in depressed patients is associated with an abnormal neural response within the medial caudate and ventromedial orbitofrontal cortex, regions implicated in reward mechanisms. We argue that the observed abnormalities may depend on a combination of psychological factors, with both cognitive and emotive components.     

Effect of success and failure on depressive cognitions

A cognitive social-learning approach to depression emphasizes biases or distortions in depressed persons' evaluation of information about self, future, and environment. 33 depressed and 34 nondepressed female undergraduates participated in a task that ostensibly assessed therapeutic potential; they received success, failure, or no feedback about their performance on this realistic social interaction task. It was anticipated that depressed women, especially as a function of feedback would respond in characteristic ways that could be construed as depression-enhancing on both self-rating and expectation-of-performance measures. The predictions were largely confirmed. A task developed to assess depressed-distorted responses to stories also revealed significant differences in types of response choices between depressed and nondepressed Ss. Results reinforce attempts to assess not what depressed people are or have , but what they do . (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of negative feedback on tension and subsequent performance: The main and interactive effects of goal content and conscientiousness.

The purpose of this experiment was to examine the interplay of goal content, conscientiousness, and tension on performance following negative feedback. Undergraduate students were assigned either a learning or performance goal and then were provided with false feedback indicating very poor performance on the task they performed. After assessing tension, participants performed the task again with the same learning or performance goal. A mediated moderation model was tested, and results were supportive of our hypotheses. Specifically, individuals assigned a learning goal experienced less tension and performed better following negative feedback than individuals assigned a performance goal. Individuals high in conscientiousness experienced greater tension than individuals low in conscientiousness. Conscientiousness and goal content interacted in relating to both tension and performance, with tension as a mediator, such that high conscientiousness amplified the detrimental effect of a performance goal on tension following negative feedback leading to lower performance. High conscientiousness facilitated performance for participants with a learning goal. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Correcting a metacognitive error: Feedback increases retention of low-confidence correct responses.

Previous studies investigating posttest feedback have generally conceptualized feedback as a method for correcting erroneous responses, giving virtually no consideration to how feedback might promote learning of correct responses. Here, the authors show that when correct responses are made with low confidence, feedback serves to correct this initial metacognitive error, enhancing retention of low-confidence correct responses. In 2 experiments, subjects took an initial multiple-choice test on general knowledge facts and made a confidence judgment after each response. Feedback was provided for half of the questions, and retention was assessed by a final cued-recall test. Taking the initial test improved retention relative to not testing, and feedback further enhanced performance. Consistent with prior research, feedback improved retention by allowing subjects to correct initially erroneous responses. Of more importance, feedback also doubled the retention of correct low-confidence responses, relative to providing no feedback. The function of feedback is to correct both memory errors and metacognitive errors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Frontolimbic Response to Negative Feedback in Clinical Depression.

Functional neuroimaging suggests that limbic regions of the medial frontal cortex may be abnormally active in individuals with depression. These regions, including the anterior cingulate cortex, are engaged in both action regulation, such as monitoring errors and conflict, and affect regulation, such as responding to pain. The authors examined whether clinically depressed subjects would show abnormal sensitivity of frontolimbic networks as they evaluated negative feedback. Depressed subjects and matched control subjects performed a video game in the laboratory as a 256-channel EEG was recorded. Speed of performance on each trial was graded with a feedback signal of A, C, or F. By 350 ms after the feedback signal, depressed subjects showed a larger medial frontal negativity for all feedback compared with control subjects with a particularly striking response to the F grade. This response was strongest for moderately depressed subjects and was attenuated for subjects who were more severely depressed. Localization analyses suggested that negative feedback engaged sources in the anterior cingulate and insular cortices. These results suggest that moderate depression may sensitize limbic networks to respond strongly to aversive events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attributions of the "causes" of group performance as an alternative explanation of the relationship between organizational citizenship behavior and organizational performance.

The purpose of this study was to examine the possibility that feedback regarding team performance may influence team members' reports of organizational citizenship behaviors. 95 teams of business students (N=412) participated in a labor-scheduling simulation over a local area network. Teams were provided with false negative, false positive, or neutral feedback regarding their performance. Results support the hypothesis that the perception of 2 forms of organizational citizenship behavior (helping behavior and civic virtue) in work groups may, in part, be a function of the nature of the performance feedback that group members receive. However, negative feedback appears to play a more critical role than positive feedback in this attributional process. Possible reasons for these findings, as well as their implications, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Erroneous knowledge of results affects decision and memory processes on timing tasks.

On mental timing tasks, erroneous knowledge of results (KR) leads to incorrect performance accompanied by the subjective judgment of accurate performance. Using the start-stop technique (an analogue of the peak interval procedure) with both reproduction and production timing tasks, the authors analyze what processes erroneous KR alters. KR provides guidance (performance error information) that lowers decision thresholds. Erroneous KR also provides targeting information that alters response durations proportionately to the magnitude of the feedback error. On the production task, this shift results from changes in the reference memory, whereas on the reproduction task this shift results from changes in the decision threshold for responding. The idea that erroneous KR can alter different cognitive processes on related tasks is supported by the authors' demonstration that the learned strategies can transfer from the reproduction task to the production task but not visa versa. Thus effects of KR are both task and context dependent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Placing perceptions of politics in the context of the feedback environment, employee attitudes, and job performance.

The authors proposed a model suggesting that organizational environments supporting high levels of informal supervisor and coworker feedback are associated with lower employee perceptions of organizational politics. Furthermore, these lowered perceptions of politics were proposed to result in higher employee morale (as reflected in job satisfaction and affective commitment) and, through morale, to higher levels of task performance and organizational citizenship. The proposed mediational model was supported with empirical results from 150 subordinate-supervisor dyads sampled across a variety of organizations. Higher quality feedback environments were associated with lower perceptions of organizational politics, and morale mediated the relationships between organizational politics and various aspects of work performance. These findings suggest that when employees have greater access to information regarding behaviors that are acceptable and desired at work, perceptions of politics are reduced and work outcomes are enhanced. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The regulatory function of self-esteem: Testing the epistemic and acceptance signaling systems.

The authors draw on sociometer theory (e.g., Leary, 2004) and self-verification theory (e.g., Swann, 1997) to propose an expanded model of the regulatory function of self-esteem. The model suggests that people not only possess an acceptance signaling system that indicates whether relational value is high or low but also possess an epistemic signaling system that indicates whether social feedback is consistent or inconsistent with chronic perceived relational value (i.e., global self-esteem). One correlational study and 5 experiments, with diverse operationalizations of social feedback, demonstrated that the epistemic signaling system responds to self-esteem consistent or inconsistent relational-value feedback with increases or deceases in epistemic certainty. Moreover, Studies 3–6 demonstrated that the acceptance and epistemic signaling systems respond uniquely to social feedback. Finally, Studies 5 and 6 provide evidence that the epistemic signaling system is part of a broader self-regulatory system: Self-esteem inconsistent feedback caused cognitive efforts to decrease the discrepancy between self-views and feedback and caused depleted self-regulatory capacity on a subsequent self-control task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Achievement of specificational information usage with true and false feedback in learning a visual relative-mass discrimination task.

Participants' usage of informational variables in learning visual relative-mass discrimination in collisions was tracked by means of PROBIT correlations. Four groups received feedback that was true or accorded with either of three nonspecificational cue variables. A majority in each group adopted the feedback, but several participants defied the false feedback. Unlike in previous research, the fit to data of the relative-mass invariant could not be bettered by post hoc linear combinations of the cues. Discriminability was lower in the use of the invariant. Analytic complexity was rejected as an explanation for discriminability differences. A "smart mechanism" for pickup of the relative-mass invariant was developed as an extension of G. Johansson's (1950/1994) vector model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Manipulating subjective expectancy through feedback: A laboratory study of the expectancy–performance relationship.

Investigated the form of the expectancy–performance relationship in a laboratory study of the performance of 132 undergraduates on a simple clerical task. As feedback after each of 8 trials, Ss were told that their performance was better, worse, or borderline. Ss recorded their subjective expectancies before each trial. Over all Ss, feedback condition had no impact on performance; but when 39 Ss whose reported expectancy did not match their assigned feedback were eliminated, a strong expectancy–performance relationship emerged. Ss having intermediate expectancy outperformed those whose expectancy was low or high. Examination of the nonbelievers supported the mediating role of cognitive variables in deciding how hard to work at this task. (8 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An information-processing approach to leniency in performance judgments.

The traditional rendering-bias explanation of leniency in performance judgments was postulated to be incomplete. To demonstrate this insufficiency, an encoding-bias model of leniency was proposed, and hypotheses generated from both models were tested in a laboratory experiment. 60 students viewed a videotape of a lecture, and their expectations of providing face-to-face feedback to the instructor were manipulated preobservation, postobservation, or not at all. Dependent variables included measures of encoding, private appraisals, retrieval, and public appraisals. As expected, results supported both explanations of leniency. However, the pattern of results suggests that a retrieval bias may also contribute to leniency in performance judgments. A more complex view of leniency effects is proposed on the basis of principles of motivated cognitive processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A meta-analytic examination of the goal orientation nomological net.

The authors present an empirical review of the literature concerning trait and state goal orientation (GO). Three dimensions of GO were examined: learning, prove performance, and avoid performance along with presumed antecedents and proximal and distal consequences of these dimensions. Antecedent variables included cognitive ability, implicit theory of intelligence, need for achievement, self-esteem, general self-efficacy, and the Big Five personality characteristics. Proximal consequences included state GO, task-specific self-efficacy, self-set goal level, learning strategies, feedback seeking, and state anxiety. Distal consequences included learning, academic performance, task performance, and job performance. Generally speaking, learning GO was positively correlated, avoid performance GO was negatively correlated, and prove performance GO was uncorrelated with these variables. Consistent with theory, state GO tended to have stronger relationships with the distal consequences than did trait GO. Finally, using a meta-correlation matrix, the authors found that trait GO predicted job performance above and beyond cognitive ability and personality. These results demonstrate the value of GO to organizational researchers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When Does Feedback Facilitate Learning of Words?

Some researchers have suggested that although feedback may enhance performance during associative learning, it does so at the expense of later retention. To examine this issue, subjects (N = 258) learned Luganda-English word pairs. After 2 initial exposures to the materials, subjects were tested on each item several times, with the presence and type of feedback varying between subjects. A final test followed after 1 week. Supplying the correct answer after an incorrect response not only improved performance during the initial learning session--it also increased final retention by 494%. On the other hand, feedback after correct responses made little difference either immediately or at a delay, regardless of whether the subject was confident in the response. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)