Thoughts on Feedback

 Feedback Articles

(Image Source: Wiki Commons)

One aspect of the article "A Fixed Mindset could be Holding you Back at Work" by Anna Kelsey-Sugg and Ann Arnold, that I found most interesting was how excessive positive feedback results in a brittle person incapable of overcoming adversity. The part of this most intriguing was the usage of the word brittle, primarily for the mental image it conjures of one's mind literally breaking. Having come from an environment which was most definitely contributing to excessive positive feedback, I can understand how accurate this image it. Oftentimes when confronted with. a situation where one does not believe that a chance at success exists, it is very easy to simply shut down. and this applies even more in situations of feedback where it appears as if someone is actively criticizing your work. In those situations, it is antural to throw up barriers both to defend oneself from criticism and to help keep you form having to do the thing which you were criticized for in the first place ever again. 

Retaliation to negative feedback is a prominent theme in Tim Herrera's article "Why it's so Hard to Hear Negative Feedback" and focuses primarily on people's defensiveness in the face of negative feedback. In the article, Herrera cites several studies which show people actively avoid feedback for fear of getting critiqued. The primary reason for this, as the studies suggest, is because people do not tend to believe that other are actually actin in good faith. Instead, they fear that people are being overly critical with the intent of tearing one another down. From personal experience, I can wholly understand this sentiment. When a peer edits your paper, one's inclination at the first critique is to see how they were wrong to say what they did and to defend your own answer; not because they necessarily are wrong, but because the very fact they say there is something which needs editing implies they are trying to critique the person and not the paper.