Research: Negative Feedback Rarely Helps People Improve: Is shopping for confirmation an innate drive? Can we decide not to do it?
I doubt it. As I said, negative feedback manifests itself as a psychological threat. And over the last two to three decades, a body of research has shown that that kind of threat has not only behavioral consequences but physical ones as well: Lethargy. Anxiety. Depression. I think we can’t help reacting to it by doing something that will make us feel better. Whether it’s conscious or not, we don’t know. It’s probably a little of both, but it’s such a fundamental, deep-seated drive to want a circle of people around us that will prop us up. And we’ll go to great measures to create that circle if we have to.
What we see in the data is that current feedback systems trigger this reaction of constructing a surrounding group that will protect us from experiencing critical input. It’s the definition of an echo chamber. So feedback not only doesn’t work but leads to social formations that will prevent it from ever working.
I doubt it. As I said, negative feedback manifests itself as a psychological threat. And over the last two to three decades, a body of research has shown that that kind of threat has not only behavioral consequences but physical ones as well: Lethargy. Anxiety. Depression. I think we can’t help reacting to it by doing something that will make us feel better. Whether it’s conscious or not, we don’t know. It’s probably a little of both, but it’s such a fundamental, deep-seated drive to want a circle of people around us that will prop us up. And we’ll go to great measures to create that circle if we have to.
What we see in the data is that current feedback systems trigger this reaction of constructing a surrounding group that will protect us from experiencing critical input. It’s the definition of an echo chamber. So feedback not only doesn’t work but leads to social formations that will prevent it from ever working.