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- Vol 5 RE: Chapter 5
- Vol 5 TE: App C
feedback intervention theoryperformance feedbacktask-focused attentionself-focused attentiongoal claritytask complexityactionable feedbackJournal article Evidence summaryAt a glance
Kluger and DeNisi review the feedback literature, meta-analyse 131 eligible studies, and propose Feedback Intervention Theory to explain highly variable effects. Feedback interventions improve performance on average, but more than one third of observed effects are negative.
Key ideas
The theory holds that feedback changes where attention is directed within a hierarchy of control. Information focused on task details, processes, or discrepancies that the learner can act upon is more likely to support performance. Feedback that shifts attention upward toward the self—through praise, threat, evaluation, or ego involvement—can consume resources, provoke affect, and reduce task-focused regulation. Effects also depend on goal clarity, task complexity, perceived control, and whether feedback supplies useful cues or merely signals success and failure. More feedback is therefore not automatically better.
Why it matters
The synthesis includes heterogeneous tasks and intervention types, and the authors’ explanatory model is preliminary rather than a simple recipe. Designers should keep attention close to the work, provide specific information for adjustment, avoid unnecessary self-comparison, and evaluate whether an intervention changes behaviour and learning rather than assuming that receiving results is beneficial.
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Edition abbreviations
- TE
- Teacher Edition
- PE
- Practice Edition
- RE
- Research Edition
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