Feedback is given throughout our lives and every individual reacts differently to it, for example feedback may motivate an individual or harm their self-esteem. Social psychology has helped to understand why some individuals react to feedback in different ways through theories such as social comparison theory and cognitive dissonance. This essay is about these different theories and how my personal experiences support these ideas because of the way I reacted to the feedback that was given to me.
When I was in year 13 I completed my psychology mock exam and was given feedback on the quality of my answers as well as an overall grade. This was given to me during my psychology class and immediately I compared my grade to other people within my class to see if I did better or worse than them. When I found out I did better than them I felt positive about my work and felt that I had achieved something but when I did worse than others I felt like I needed to try harder and that the quality of my answers were not the best. This effected my self-esteem because I didn’t feel that I had the capability to achieve the high grades that others in my class did. But to maintain my self-esteem I told myself that those who did better than me were naturally clever in the topic areas and that it was just a mock exam, therefore it didn’t matter what grade I got because I can improve it for the real exam, which lead to me becoming motivated to push myself further and do better for the real exam by learning from my mistakes and taking on the feedback that was given to me on what I can do to improve my grade. My immediate reaction of comparing myself to others after receiving my grade can be explained by Festinger’s Social Comparison theory as this suggests that individuals look at others to see whether they are good or bad at something depending on if they are ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than them (as cited in Hogg & Vaughan, 2014). Often individuals prefer to downward social compare, which is when they compare themselves to someone who seems worse than them because it increases their self-esteem, making them feel better therefore this explains why I felt better when I compared my essay to those who received a lower grade than me whereas upwards social comparison is when individuals compare themselves to someone who seems better than them, which can harm their self-esteem. However, there are strategies to maintain high self-esteem such as devaluing the dimension of comparison, for example in my case I said that it was only a mock exam therefore it wasn’t that important and exaggerating the ability of the better person, which I did by telling myself that those who did better than me are naturally clever (as cited in Van Rooy, Wood & Tran, 2016).
In addition, the idea of downward and upward social comparison can be seen in different situations, for example the facial expressions of medal winners at the 1992 Olympic Games were observed and it was found that bronze medallists showed more satisfaction than silver medallists because they made downward comparisons with those who received no medals, whereas silver medallists made upward social comparisons with the gold medallists (Medvac, Gilovich & Madey, 1995 cited in Hogg & Vaughan, 2014). This suggests that it is human nature to compare one another to measure our ability and performing better than others makes an individual feel good about themselves.
Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance theory refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviours, which produces a feeling of discomfort leading to a change of one’s attitudes, beliefs or producing cognitions that explain behaviours to reduce the discomfort and restore balance (as cited in Kretchmar, 2013). This theory can be linked to a personal experience of when I did a detox scheme for my final swimming competition which was coming up, therefore we were told to eat healthy for the week by counting the calories of what was eaten within a day in order to not exceed the maximum calorie limit. However, there was one day when I went over this calorie limit by 1,000 calories and my swimming coach marked this red on the online app but I thought to myself that it was only by 1,000 calories and I could of gone over the limit a lot more therefore it won’t make a difference and I will skip a meal the next day to balance out the 1,000 calories that I went over the previous day. This shows that I experienced dissonance after I was given feedback from my swimming coach that I had gone over the calorie limit by 1,000 therefore I tried to reduce it by changing my attitude towards my behaviour by thinking to myself that it’s not that bad and I will make it up the next day.
Steele’s Self-Affirmation theory argues that individuals strive to maintain a favourable view of themselves through making wise and moral decisions therefore dissonance reduction is not about restoring consistency but instead it is about resorting the integrity of one’s self-concept leading to greater self-esteem through attitude and behaviour changes, which can be linked to my personal experience of me changing my attitude to boost my self-esteem and feeling better about going over the calorie limit (as cited in Nail & Davis, 2004). However, it can be argued that cognitive dissonance is about restoring balance, which can be supported by Festinger and Carlsmith study. In this study, students were asked to participate in a boring peg turning task and believed that they were being observed on their performance. They were then asked to fill-in for a missing experimenter by telling future participants that the study was ‘exciting’ and were placed in one of three conditions; paid $1 to do the favour, paid $20 to do the favour or paid $0 to do the favour, which was the control condition. It was found that those who were paid $1 convinced themselves that the task was enjoyable as they had no other justification therefore cognitive dissonance occurred between the conflicting cognitions of telling someone that a particular task is interesting when in fact it was the opposite whereas those who were paid $20 used the money reward as a primary justification for carrying out the task (as cited in Kretchmar, 2013). This suggests that cognitive dissonance is about restoring balance because the participants experienced uncomfortable tension leading to finding justifications for their behaviour to believe that what they were doing was right.
Another theory that can help explain individual’s reactions to feedback is the idea of obedience, which is following explicit instructions of an authority figure in hierarchy, for example following the instructions of a police officer or a work boss. I can relate to being obedient to a person in authority, which was when I didn’t obey the feedback given by my course friend of changing the conclusion of my essay as she believed it wasn’t good enough and didn’t meet the objectives of the task but I felt the opposite and strongly believed that it was my conclusion that will help me gain a higher grade therefore I didn’t change it but when my lecturer said the same thing I changed it without question because he has higher authority even though it went against what I believed as I felt my conclusion was good enough and to the best of my ability. The reaction of me changing my conclusion when I was given the same feedback from my lecturer can be supported by Milgram’s study. Participants were told that they were the ‘teacher’ and had to read a series of paired-associated word tasks and each time the ‘learner’ got the answer wrong they had to give an electric shock, which would increase by 15 volts each time. It was found that the overall obedience rate was 62.5% and 100% of participants went up to 300 volts (Mel, Angus, Adam, David, Christoph, Chris & Maria, 2006). This suggests that people are willing to obey those regarded as an authority figures even if it means going against what they believe in, which explains why I went against my belief of my conclusion being my strongest paragraph, but I still changed it solely based on the idea that my lecturer has a higher status than me.
Overall, reflecting critically on my own past experiences of when I received feedback has helped me understand why I reacted the way I did through different evidential studies and theories. This suggests that individual’s behaviours can be explained by different psychologists allowing us to understand and predict future behaviours.