No matter if it’s good or bad; when it comes to difficult decision-making tasks, feedback may make things even more confusing, according to new research published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience.
The participants in the study, about 100 people, had to choose the best way to predict or control the health of a baby. Apparently, this hard decision was even more difficult to make due to feedback.
‘The kind of task people had to perform was difficult and demanding,’ says Dr Magda Osman, author of the study. ‘So, when people received positive or negative feedback, it overloaded them with too much information and distracted them from making a good decision.’
‘My work shows that feedback alone is not enough to ensure success in decision making,’ she says. ‘I may not be popular for my research into the role of feedback in complex decision-making tasks but I hope it will make some people think twice about whether they could potentially hinder people’s performance with the feedback they provide.’
Osman, M. (2012). The role of feedback in dynamic decision making. Frontiers in Decision Neuroscience
Feedback that Works
Sloan R. Weitzel
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