A 2011 Wharton study tested four types of feedback on participants. Only contemptuous feedback, which expressed disappointment and low expectations, triggered aggression. Angry feedback, neutral praise, and numeric grades did not.
tell you guys, there was a Wharton Business School study back in 2011. And I found this really interesting. So what they did is they set up all these people in the study, and they did this project together. And they then gave each of the participants feedback on their work. And they had 4 different categories of feedback on what kind of feedback they received. And what was interesting is the first category was what they called just kind of neutral feedback. And it was just kind of like an appreciation gesture. It was like, hey, thank you for what you submitted, right? That was considered neutral. So it was like very benign, nothing really meaningful to it. The second group was what they called angry feedback. And that's where the person said, hey, your work is really starting to anger me, right? I'm sure you didn't like that, Peggy. So like really starting to anger me, right? And the third, third feedback was contemptuous. And this was the feedback where the person said, hey, you know, I expected really quick thinking, but so far I haven't seen it. Okay. And then the 4th feedback was failure, where they literally graded the person objectively on a numerical scale, and then gave them that feedback in the form of a number, right? And they basically said, hey, you got a 3.8 out of 10. Like, you did not pass this, right? Here's what was interesting. The big aha from the study is that the one category, the people that received the contemptuous feedback, Were the only ones who showed increased aggression. Okay, they were the only ones. The ones who got the anger feedback didn't, the ones who got the failure feedback didn't, the ones who got the neutral feedback obviously didn't. But I was really surprised. The only one that resulted in the other person having like some increased aggression was when the person felt contempt in the way that they said, described their project, right? So we have an opportunity and responsibility as communicators to make sure that we don't show up with And the way you do it is by always assuming positive intent.
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