Underestimating How Much Other People Want Feedback

Have you ever arrived home, after a long day at work of meetings and talking to coworkers, looked in the mirror and saw you had a stain on your shirt? Or something in your teeth? And nobody told you! Maybe you tried to backtrack and try to figure out when exactly it happened, and how many people may have seen you afterwards.

Perhaps you've also been on the other side of this situation as well—seeing somebody who could probably use feedback, but, for some reason, feeling hesitant to give them feedback, even though it would certainly improve their situation.

My co-authors and I have had many similar experiences. We have been in situations where we would have certainly benefited from feedback, but we have also been in situations where we felt hesitant to give other people similar feedback. These experiences made us very curious about why people feel hesitant to give others constructive feedback, even when they know they would want that feedback themselves.

Past research suggests that the reason for not giving feedback is fear that providing feedback will have negative consequences. People don't want to hurt someone's feelings, and don't want to be the bearer of bad news. So, people prioritize avoiding interpersonal harm over being helpful.

We thought there may be more to the story. An alternative explanation goes like this: Maybe people hesitate to give others feedback because they don't realize how much other people want it. They don't recognize just how much their feedback will have positive consequences for others, leading them to believe that others want feedback less.

Psychology is filled with instances where people don't expect others to react the same way in situations that one would react oneself. For example, people tend to attribute their own faults to situations, but faults of others to their personality (I was driving like a jerk because I'm late to my daughter's recital, but he was driving like a jerk because he is one). Another example is in the domain of gratitude; people appreciate receiving expressions of gratitude, but they don't expect others to be as appreciative. We guessed that estimating desire for feedback may be another misprediction of others' reactions: underestimating how much others want the very same feedback that would be much appreciated if given to oneself.

Would You Tell Someone if They Had Chocolate on Their Face?

We started our inquiry by sending researchers around a busy college campus with chocolate on their faces and a chocolate bar in hand. These students approached other students, asking them to take a quick survey in exchange for a cash payment—but they were really tallying up how many people told them they had chocolate on their face (or marker, or makeup in other variations we implemented—thus, giving them useful feedback).

Not many told them. In fact, out of 155 people who were approached, and who later admitted noticing the face blemish, only four people (2.6%) told the researcher about it.

Next, we asked married couples and close friends to give each other feedback on something that they thought the other person could improve. We also asked strangers to give each other feedback in a live public speaking competition. Before each feedback session, we asked the feedback-giver, "How much do you think the other person wants feedback?" And we asked the feedback receiver, "How much do you want to receive feedback?" We found a robust gap. People underestimated how much they thought other people wanted feedback.

We varied situations from less consequential scenarios (like having a stain on your shirt) to more consequential situations, like being rude to colleagues, interrupting people too much, or needing to work on their public speaking style. The gap showed up in both less consequential and more consequential scenarios. We actually found the gap was bigger in consequential scenarios (like interrupting too much)—people especially underestimated how much others wanted to get feedback in these scenarios, perhaps because these scenarios felt more like personal criticism.

Can Anything Be Done About This?

We tested two possibilities to see if we could close this gap between would-be feedback givers and receivers. The first possibility was whether seeing the situation through the other person's eyes would help. To test this, we asked people to briefly put themselves in the shoes of the other person before predicting how much the other person wanted feedback. Secondly, we also tested whether the hesitancy came from would-be feedback givers not wanting to be the bearer of bad news. Accordingly, we asked people to imagine someone else besides themselves was thinking of giving the person feedback ("Priya is considering telling Jamal that he comes across as rude in his emails. How much do you think Jamal wants feedback from Priya?"). Our reasoning for this latter exercise was that, by removing people from the situation, they may be less likely to use their own predicted discomfort in providing feedback as a cue that the recipient will not want to receive the feedback.

We found that both strategies made people more accurate in judging the other person's desire for feedback, although neither entirely closed the gap. So, the good news is that there is a way out of this mental trap. You can briefly take the other person's perspective, or imagine someone else is giving them feedback (both of these strategies involve stepping away from your own feelings about giving feedback).

So, if you're hesitating about whether to give someone feedback, we encourage you to give it. The other person probably wants your feedback more than you think!

For Further Reading

Abi-Esber, N., Abel, J., Schroeder, J., & Gino, F. (2022). "Just wanted to let you know…" Underestimating others' desire for constructive feedback. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000393

Abel, J., Vani, P., Abi-Esber, N., Blunden, H., & Schroeder, J. (2022). Kindness in short supply: Evidence for inadequate prosocial input. Current Opinion in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2022.101458

The case for criticism, Melinda Moyer, The New York Times.  https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/14/well/live/constructive-criticism.html

Nicole Abi-Esber is a PhD student in Organizational Behavior at Harvard Business School and an incoming Professor of Organisational Behaviour at the London School of Economics. She studies how to empower people to speak up.