Does Reflection Mitigate Negative Emotions Following Work Performance Feedback?

This study examined if reflection could mitigate negative emotion following negative work performance feedback. Initial research has found that reflection is beneficial for learning, but it has seldom been tested if reflection can mitigate negative emotion associated with negative feedback. Participants were tasked with completing open-ended questions based on a workplace training manual, and then received negative work performance feedback. Feedback was presented in either absolute terms, or relative to others’ performance. Afterwards, in one condition, participants completed a reflection activity, while in another condition, participants simply completed a time filler task. Participants’ emotions were then measured. Results indicated that reflection did not lead to lower scores of negative emotion. In fact, there was evidence that it resulted in higher scores of negative emotion, which held when feedback was presented in absolute terms or relative to others. Reasons for this are discussed, as well as potential future research