A recently published paper in the journal Studies in Higher Education provides a systematic review of the literature on negative feedback. The authors sorted through 1790 peer-reviewed articles published between 2010 and 2022 that dealt with various kinds of feedback. These were narrowed down to 36 articles that were central to the study by applying a number of criteria, such as the paper presenting findings directly related to negative feedback and discussing undergraduate education.
For the purposes of the paper, the authors define negative feedback as comments that focus on incorrect responses and areas for improvement. As such, negative feedback ignores correct responses, achievements and individual strengths and simply gives advice on what needs to be changed.

It is generally accepted that negative feedback is a necessary component of undergraduate teaching in order for students to learn about expected standards and norms. Instructors give negative feedback in the hope that students will gain an understanding of their present capabilities, the expectations placed on them and thus the performance gap that they need to close. The intention, of course is that students will learn from the negative feedback and be motivated to improve their performance. However, it is accepted that negative feedback can, and does, sometimes have the opposite effect. To date there has been no comprehensive audit of the potentially adverse consequences of negative feedback on students, their causes and possible mitigation strategies.  

The newly-published meta-analysis finds unintentional negative effects on student self-concept, cognition, affect and behaviour. 

The threat of negative feedback to self-concept was cited in 11 of the identified studies. Here, students begin to doubt their own abilities. As one student puts it:

I don’t have confidence in what I write. [speaking about feedback] It's not that negative, but there's always quite a lot of negative […] nothing's positive here. All of this, there's nothing positive about it at all. It's not good. Maybe it's just I’m rubbish; I dunno.

Busse (2013:417)

One observed cognitive effect of negative feedback could be seen in changes in student motivation. According to Carless (2020), these changes in motivation could result in students not engaging with feedback.

A further adverse effect of negative feedback could be seen in affective responses. Here, the most common emotion described was anxiety, which was mentioned in five studies. Shields (2015) highlights the particular problem of first-year undergraduate students waiting for feedback on their first hand-in task. If they then receive negative feedback, it exacerbates their anxiety and can make them doubt their position on the course. In the words of one participant:

For the first few days I was just in an upset mood. And I couldn’t get over it […]

Shields (2015: 621)

Finally, twelve studies reported changes in behavioural responses after receiving negative feedback. Many reported that feedback had not achieved its aim, with students not modifying their work in response to the negative feedback. Indeed, a number of studies found that students’ performance actually became worse after receiving negative feedback.

Factors that can exacerbate negative effects
There were a number of factors that come into play that can either worsen or soften the potential negative effects of feedback. The authors identify three such factors to do with: the giver of the feedback, the receiver of the feedback and the nature of the feedback given. 

In terms of giving negative feedback, the way in which the giver of the feedback is experienced by the student is important. Put simply, if the student feels that the person giving the feedback is uncaring, then the negative effects are made worse:

Tutors should help us with the emotions related to assessment. Assessment is scary. It is about judgement and tutors have to be kind as well as fair in how they judge you. If they show you they care then you want to do well for them as well as for yourself.

Hill et al. (2021: 620)

The receiver of the feedback is also important. Students with poorer self-concept fared worse than those with higher self-concept. Students’ mental health issues were also mentioned by six of the studies. Students with pre-existing anxiety had worse performance following negative feedback, and a similar result was found for students with depression.

The final factor is the nature of the feedback itself. Marking schemes that are not transparent or too much focus on ‘irrelevant’ aspects such as grammatical errors instead of content all led to negative feedback being experienced as unhelpful.

Comment: Reading this paper, I was reminded of my own shortcomings in the area of feedback. I recognise all too well the fixation with correcting mistakes, rather than praising students for what they did well. For many of us this is an issue that we struggle with. However, as pointed out in the article, negative feedback is essential if students are to improve their performance. In this respect, Carless and Boud (2018), have coined the term feedback literacy to describe students’ growing ability to appropriately respond to feedback. They suggest two activities that can help to increase feedback literacy—giving and receiving peer feedback and analysing exemplars of how feedback has been given and discussing how to respond.

Personally, when it comes to giving and receiving feedback, I like to use the ladder of feedback that was originally designed by Daniel Wilson. There are many versions of this tool online, but essentially, he describes feedback as ideally following four stages: Clarify, Value, Concerns, Suggest. Stage one entails asking students to describe what they have done and their reasoning behind this. This is very important. Sometimes when a student explains why they have done something it makes much more sense. Thereafter comes feedback about what is good, before going over to any concerns you may have. The final stage is suggesting a way forward.

Text: John Airey, Department of Teaching and Learning

The study
Mercer, M., & Gulseren, D. B. (2024). When negative feedback harms: a systematic review of the unintended consequences of negative feedback on psychological, attitudinal, and behavioral responses. Studies in Higher Education, 49(4), 654-669.

Keywords: Feedback, negative feedback, undergraduate learning, feedback literacy, ladder of feedback

References
Carless, D., & Boud, D. (2018). The development of student feedback literacy: enabling uptake of feedback. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 43(8), 1315–1325. 
Carless, D. 2020. “Longitudinal Perspectives on Students’ Experiences of Feedback: A Need for Teacher–Student Partnerships.” Higher Education Research and Development 39:3 425–438.
Busse, V. 2013. “How Do Students of German Perceive Feedback Practices at University? A Motivational Exploration.” Journal of Second Language Writing: 406–424.
Hill, J., & West, H. 2022. “Dialogic Feed-Forward in Assessment: Pivotal to Learning but not Unproblematic.” Teaching and Learning Inquiry: The ISSOTL Journal 10:1–19. 
Kim, E. J., &Lee, R. K. 2019. “Effects of an Examiner’s Positive and Negative Feedback on Self-Assessment of Skill Performance, Emotional Response, and Self-Efficacy in Korea: A Quasi-Experimental Study.” BMC Medical Education 19:1-7. 
Shields, S. 2015. “‘My Work is Bleeding’: Exploring Students’ Emotional Responses to First-Year Assignment Feedback.” Teaching in Higher Education 20(6), 614–624.