Individual Differences and Social-Comparative Feedback
Abstract
The purpose of the overall program of research was to investigate whether there are individual differences that facilitate the acceptance of, or preferences for, social-comparative performance feedback. In doing so, we aimed to establish how individual differences could be leveraged to mitigate the negative reactions that some individuals experience in response to social-comparative feedback (Feeney, Goffin, & Schneider, 2016; Roch et al., 2007). Likewise, we sought to determine whether individual differences were associated with a preference for social-comparative feedback. The results of the first study (N = 255) advanced a novel experimental design and found that, with limited exception, the individual differences examined in the study were not related to ratees’ reactions to and acceptance of social-comparative performance feedback. In our second study (N = 145) participants were presented with a vignette and indicated whether they would prefer to work for a company that used a social-comparative performance management system or a traditional absolute performance management system. The results of the study found that individuals who preferred a social-comparative performance management system were high on two narrow facets of Conscientiousness (i.e., Diligence, and Organization) prefer social-comparative performance ratings over traditional absolute performance ratings. The details and implications of these findings across both studies are discussed and we conclude that more research on this topic is needed.