Emotions and feedback

Ever felt happy or annoyed when receiving feedback from someone?

Our emotions are helpful because they communicate to us incredibly quickly about ourselves in the context of a situation.

They’re constructed in the moment, drawing together information about our physical sensations, information that we take in about the world around us, our knowledge and understandings learnt from our past experience, our social context, and our cultural understandings. We apply language to all of this information to create meaning or a story that helps us to make predictions about what comes next.

In feedback situations, we may interpret feedback based on factors such as the person delivering feedback, how important the task associated with the feedback is, and our understandings or experiences of feedback in the past. Perhaps feedback from your boss or teacher holds more weight to you compared to feedback from a colleague or peer. You may also particularly like comments from one individual because of how supportive and helpful they are.

As such, our emotions are an important part of what motivates us to action. For example, receiving positive feedback may provide us with joy and happiness that reinforces that we are doing well, and can drive us to improve our work so that we receive more praise. In contrast, feedback that is heavily critical or promotes a sense of confusion may be discouraging for some people, to the point where they may try to avoid using the feedback to improve work or receiving feedback from others in the future.

Knowing that our emotions and responses to feedback are built from many parts of our experience means that we can have an active role in regulating them. A lot of the time, this happens under the radar and out of our awareness – but by becoming more aware of the emotions we experience, we can make changes to the information our brains draw on to create emotion which, in turn, can help change how we respond to feedback.

For example, let’s say you had spent the night watching scary movies. You’re getting ready for bed, and your body is still feeling activated after that last jump-scare. Maybe you noticed feeling a little more awake than usual at bedtime, and that unpleasant feeling from watching the movie is sticking around.

Then, you hear a loud noise outside: BANG! It gives you a jump and you feel prickly all over your skin. In this moment, your feelings – or core affect – give you a summary about the state of your body (pleasure/displeasure, arousal/calmness). This, combined with your past experience, and information about your context (not seeing the source of the sound) might lead your brain to construct an emotion: scared.

Let’s change one thing. Say you decided to have a cup of tea and a conversation with a good friend before bed. Perhaps your body feels a little more pleasant and calm.

Then, you hear a loud noise outside: BANG! It still gives you a jump and you feel prickly all over, but this time your brain’s combination of information might result in an instance of the emotion that is slightly different: concerned.

When we think about feedback, it makes sense that our emotions are involved and that we could have a range of them helping us to construct meaning; to predict, plan, and motivate (or demotivate) our actions based on suggestions from others; or to formulate feedback of our own.

Knowing how emotion is constructed can help us to understand that the same feedback received by two different people can be experienced with very different emotions. Similarly, the same feedback received by one person on two different occasions may be experienced with very different emotions.

Helping our brains to learn new ways of experiencing feedback by introducing new information, strategies and approaches can be a powerful way to increase our flexibility in how we respond to it and extend ourselves beyond the usual range of emotions and actions we typically find ourselves taking. Over time, and with practice, you may find you have cultivated a more helpful emotional life around feedback aligned with your values and goals.

Practise your skills

Getting to know our own emotions around feedback is a great starting point for considering strategies that can help us to regulate our emotions and make choices about what we do.

Think of a time when you coped well in a feedback situation. It may have been a situation where you received a range of feedback information (including conflicting information) from one or more people, and you were able to effectively make a decision about what feedback to use to improve your work.

Take a few moments to put yourself back in your shoes at that time and reflect on the following questions:

1. What was the situation and what was the nature of the feedback that meant you were able to effectively utilise the feedback information? Where and when was it? Who was there? What was your understanding of the purpose of the feedback? How was it delivered? What else was there that supported you to be effective in this way?
2. What emotions stood out to you during the situation above? What sensations or feelings did you notice when you were being effective? Perhaps you noticed that broad summary of the state of your body, or maybe you can remember more specific physical sensations (if any).
3. What went through your mind that highlighted to you that you were doing well? Thoughts, images, memories?
4. What did you do that worked so well?

You might like to do this activity again, thinking about another feedback encounter. Was it similar, or were there differences? What do you notice if you compare your emotions, sensations, thoughts, and behaviours?

Optionally, you might like to keep an eye out for your emotions about feedback over the next week. Use the questions above to keep a log. You can use this log to have a chat with a trusted and supportive friend, family member or health professional if you think it would be helpful for you.

References

Barrett, L. F. (2017). The theory of constructed emotion: An active inference account of interoception and categorization. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 12(1), 1–23.

Gross, J. J. (2015). The Extended Process Model of Emotion Regulation: Elaborations, Applications, and Future Directions. Psychological Inquiry, 26(1), 130–137.