THE IMPACT OF NEGATIVE FEEDBACK ON CREATIVITY: THE ROLE OF EMPLOYEES’ SELF-EFFICACY

THE IMPACT OF NEGATIVE FEEDBACK ON CREATIVITY: THE ROLE

OF EMPLOYEES’ SELF-EFFICACY

Master thesis, MSc Human Resource Management (HRM)

University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business

January 20, 2019

Supervisor: prof. Dr. B.A Nijstad

Human Resource Management & Organizational Behavior

THE IMPACT OF NEGATIVE FEEDBACK ON CREATIVITY: THE ROLE

OF EMPLOYEES’ SELF-EFFICACY

ABSTRACT

Negative feedback may have both positive and negative consequences for knowledge workers’ creativity. In this paper, I expect that this relationship depends on the employees’ self-efficacy. More specifically, negative feedback will lead to higher motivation and enhance creativity if self-efficacy is high, and to higher anxiety and decrease creativity if self-efficacy is low. These hypotheses were tested in a laboratory experiment (N=231), in which participants’ self-efficacy was measured and feedback was manipulated. After performing a first task, half participants received negative feedback about their performance, and then all of them performed a second task to measure the effects of feedback on their feelings and on their creative performance. Results demonstrated that not all hypotheses were confirmed, but there are evidence that negative feedback increases anxiety when people’s self-efficacy is low, and also that individuals who were motivated had on average a high creative performance. Future research is needed for extending the investigation for the positive or negative effects of many indicators, such as anxiety, on knowledge workers performance.

INTRODUCTION

In the workplace, feedback is used everywhere. Generally speaking, employee performance feedback is a valuable source of information for employees, employers, owners and supervisors. When an employee's work is evaluated, usually he/she will receive feedback. That can be positive or negative, depending on how well the work has been done. In order to improve their performance, employees should make good use of the feedback that they receive, even if this is negative. Negative feedback can, however, have different consequences. On the one hand, it is common that negative feedback has opposite consequences from the initial purpose of feedback on employee's psychology (e.g., it may undermine self-confidence, self-esteem, Dimotakis, Mitchell, & Maurer, 2017; Bandura, 1977). Many people assume that negative feedback drives employees to be stressed, unmotivated, and apathetic. On the other hand, negative performance feedback can cause an opposite impact on employee behavior. In this case, the employee who received the critical comments will use it as a motivation to perform better (Higgins, 1997, 1998). The receivers see the negative feedback as a source of information, giving them the opportunity to improve their behavior at work. It is clear now that negative feedback can have both positive and negative effects on employees’ performance.

et al. (2010), emotional expressions like anger in workplace conversations, can be interpreted as negative feedback and may raise negative feelings and negatively impact employee creativity. However, it is not clear when negative feedback will have positive effects and increase motivation, or will have negative effects, lead to anxiety and undermine creative performance. The question, "Why and for whom can negative feedback have positive vs. negative effects on employee creativity?", will be examined in this paper.

FIGURE 1

A Model of Negative Feedback - Creativity Relationship

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Feedback and Creativity

employee performance positively (Higgins, 1997, 1998; DeNisi & Kluger, 2000). For example, DeNisi and Kluger (2000) mentioned that receiving negative information about how they perform can also motivate employees.

Ilgen, Fisher and Taylor (1979) developed a framework for performance feedback and its functions. There are two functions: to direct behavior and to influence future behavior at work, by providing rewards/punishments. Regardless of the sign of feedback (positive, negative), feedback usually is successful in reaching its purpose. Feedback at work is to help the receivers improve their performance, providing them with useful information and comments. However, there are cases where feedback make employees feel unmotivated and discouraged (Bandura, 1977). Such dissatisfaction not only leads to continuing bad performance because employees do not accept the feedback, but also may have an impact on employees’ inclination to be innovative.

The Role of Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy was defined by Bandura (1977) as the belief in one’s capabilities to accomplish a task under certain conditions. In this way, self-efficacy determines how an individual will approach targets and challenges. Self-efficacy is based on social cognitive theory, which, according to Bandura (1977, 1986), focuses on how people interact with the environment: how they observe, acquire knowledge and learn by experiences. Bandura proposed that individuals with high self-efficacy, who believe that they can be effective on any task, react differently to difficult situations than those with low self-efficacy. Receiving negative feedback at work can be defined as a taxing situation, but depending on the level of self-efficacy could be considered in a different way. Employees who believe more in their capabilities that they can handle any condition will be more task-focused and they will work harder to prove that they are efficacious enough to successfully overcome any difficulty. On the contrary, employees with low self-efficacy will think that they cannot handle difficult situations and they will attempt to avoid them (Bandura, 1986).

People tend to develop several emotions when they evaluate or appraise a situation or an event, such as a negative performance evaluation. Lazarus and Folkman (1984), developed the cognitive appraisal theory, which is about the process of personal evaluation of an event and its possible reactions to its significance for well-being. Lazarus and Folkman (1984) defined two major components of the cognitive appraisal process, the primary and the secondary appraisal. Primary appraisal is about the perceptions of the nature and the degree of risk in a situation (e.g., a potential threat or challenge). The secondary appraisal refers to the perceptions of resources or abilities to cope with a situation. There are three stress-related appraisals: harm/loss, threat and challenge. Threat and challenge appraisals are those which occur before or in anticipation of a stressful event. In threat appraisal, the idea of danger exceeds the idea of abilities and it is difficult to cope with the stressor, but in challenge appraisal, the opposite happens and a stressor can be dealt with successfully.

to employees' self-efficacy, because self-efficacy is considered a personal or psychological resource to deal with stressors (Friedman, 1999), and it drives employees to appraise difficulties as either a challenge (high self-efficacy) or a threat (low self-efficacy). Challenge experiences may lead employees to increase their performance and eventually to increase their creativity (Nijstad, De Dreu, Rietzschel, & Baas, 2010, Ohly & Fritz, 2010). On the other side, threat appraisals may undermine employee performance and also their creativity (Gutnick, Walter, Nijstad, & De Dreu, 2012). In order to understand the way that employees will evaluate any stressor at work, depends firstly on how they will cope with it. I therefore posit that self-efficacy will moderate the effects of negative feedback on employees’ creativity. In particular:

Hypothesis 1: Negative feedback will increase employees motivation, but only when they have high self-efficacy.

In the workplace, when supervisors give to employees with high self-efficacy negative feedback about their work, they will assess it as a challenge, which will encourage them to improve their performance. Knowledge employees, such as scientists, who receive negative evaluation about their project, will think that this is a challenge and they have to work harder in order to reach their target or even exceed it. That type of assessment is seen as motivation for employees and as an opportunity to improve their performance. In turn, increased motivation will lead to an increase in the level of creativity of knowledge workers:

Hypothesis 2: For knowledge workers, motivation will be positively associated with employee creativity.

In sum, according to cognitive appraisal theory, if employees see a stressor at work as a challenge, that motivates them and their creativity is increased. Knowledge employees will reach their new goal, to improve their activities according to the received negative feedback, and that will lead to being more innovative because the challenge will inspire them to become more creative (Ohly & Fritz, 2010). However, if employees see negative feedback as a threat, which happens when self-efficacy is low, this will mainly lead to anxiety:

At work, employees may evaluate negative feedback as a stressor that cannot be overcome, and characterize it as a threat. In this case employees feel anxious and not capable to cope with the stressor. Employees low in self-efficacy will evaluate their capabilities as weak and inadequate and will experience anxiety. Also, Folkman, Lazarus, Gruen and DeLongis (1986) argued that a threat appraisal has severe impact on psychology and individuals tend to avoid and fear those threatening situations. Furthermore, research shows that anxiety leads to lower creativity (Byron & Khazanchi, 2011):

Hypothesis 4: Anxiety will decrease employees’ creativity.

In a meta-analysis by Byron and Khazanchi (2011), there is evidence that anxiety tends to have a negative impact on creative performance. One of the main arguments of this effect is that anxiety may narrow people attention, affecting their way of thinking. Therefore, people focus more on the source of the apprehension, leaving little room for creative thoughts. Narrowed attention at the perceptual and conceptual level decrease creativity because people can neither concentrate on peripheral cues nor produce different ideas. Based on these findings, creativity of knowledge employees in particular, will be probably decreased.

Together hypotheses 1 to 4 and also Figure 1 suggest that there are two indirect effects of negative feedback on creativity but that these depend on self-efficacy. Hypotheses 1 and 2 together with Figure 1 suggest an indirect effect through motivation, and Hypotheses 3 and 4 together with Figure 1 suggest an indirect effect through anxiety. The first one happens when self-efficacy is high, and the second one when self-efficacy is low.

Thus, I hypothesize that:

Hypothesis 5a: There is a positive indirect effect of negative feedback on creativity through motivation, but only when self-efficacy is high.

Hypothesis 5b: There is a negative indirect effect of negative feedback on creativity through anxiety, but only when self-efficacy is low.

Participants

In order to test my hypotheses, an experiment in the laboratory was conducted. Originally 245 University of Groningen students participated in return for 8 euros or course credits. After data inspection, 14 participants were excluded. Based on the manipulation check, 8 participants were excluded, because they claimed that they received feedback, which they did not. Also, 5 people gave irrelevant answers in the creativity task and 1 participant gave the same answer on all questionnaire items. So, that means that the final number of people who participated was 231 (133 females, 98 males; mean age 22.04 years, ​SD ​= 3.34).

Students participated in a role play in which they played the role of a research & development (R&D) employee, and received feedback from the experimenter.

Experimental design / Manipulation

Negative Feedback was the independent variable and it was manipulated, creating two conditions: 1. participants did not receive negative feedback (no feedback), 2. participants received negative feedback. To be able to randomly assign participants to conditions, this feedback was not based on the real performance of participants, even though people believed that it was real. Self-efficacy, as a second independent variable was measured rather than manipulated.

Procedure

The next part of the study was a task that they had to participate in a role play as R&D employees, who work on a project, to launch a new fragile product. Their team was responsible for finding the best way to package this fragile product. Individuals had to think about solutions (maximum 5) to protect the new product during transportation and selling. By the end of the first task, half the participants received a message containing a negative performance evaluation. In order to strengthen the credibility of the evaluation, the message informed them that they had to wait for a few seconds until the experimenter provided them with feedback, according to their performance in the first task. They were asked that when the arrow appeared they had to press it to receive the feedback. The feedback message had to be credible, and because of the limited time, instead of using a paragraph with comments, there were scores about their performance. The message of negative feedback was the following: “Dear employee, I evaluated your ideas in terms of Effort, Originality, and Creativity. Your scores in a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 = very poor to 10 = excellent, are: Effort: 3, Originality: 2, Creativity: 2. I am really dissatisfied with your performance. Sincerely the Experimenter.”. The other half of participants did not receive any message and continued to the next step of the experiment, as the first group did after they read the message.

Next, there were instructions about the second task, in which they had to come up with ideas and to be as creative as possible. Before starting the second task, participants had to indicate their agreement with four statements about how motivated and anxious they were feeling that moment, and how they perceived the second task to be, as a challenge or a threat. Right after, they had to do the second task, and think about possible uses of a newspaper. This task was used to measure how creative the participants were.

Assessment of Self-efficacy

disagree”; 5 = “strongly agree”). Also, both measures demonstrated good reliability (creative self-efficacy ​α = .709; generalized self-efficacy ​α = .780). People who scored on the low end of the scale are inclined to believe that they are not able to overcome difficulties and they will try to avoid them (low self-efficacy), whereas people who scored more on the high end of the Likert scale indicate that they believe in their capabilities and they can work hard and thrive in their field (high self-efficacy).

Assessment of Motivation and Anxiety

Immediately after the first task and, for some participants, after receiving feedback, and before the second task, all of them answered questions about their feelings at the moment (motivation, anxiety) and their perceptions for the second task (challenge, threat). I measured them, using a five-point Likert scale (1 = “strongly disagree”; 5 = “strongly agree”), as well. For each of the four, above-mentioned, measures, I developed one item (for instance, “After completing the first task I feel motivated/anxious to move on the second task”, or “I would see the second task as a challenge/threat”). The items for anxiety and threat were correlated and demonstrated a good level of reliability (​α = .629), and then they were analyzed together. In contrast to the other two items, motivation and challenge, which were not correlated to each other, and there were analyzed separately.

Idea generation second task and assessment of creativity

Participants were asked as part of their projects to come up and write down as many alternate uses as possible of a newspaper for a future project in their department. This task was based on Guilford’s Alternative Uses Task (1967). Individuals were instructed to continue brainstorming, and stop when they were sure that they ran out of other ideas (expectancy stop rule, Nijstad, Van Vianen, Stroebe & Lodewijkx, 2004). This was a way to gather information about the effects of the negative feedback manipulation after evaluation.

measured as how unique or common each idea was in the total pool of ideas. I placed all ideas ordered by the flexibility coding (categories), and for each idea I created a subcategory, to include in the same subcategory all the ideas with the same meaning. Then, I counted how many times each subcategory appeared. By this way, I indicated that for example, the subcategory “wrapping” appeared 128 times. In more detail, I converted the times that subcategories appeared to the total idea set to percentages and then I shorted them from smallest to largest. By this way I had first the subcategories which appeared less and later the subcategories that were very common. After that, I developed a five-point scale (1 = very common; 2 = common; 3 = somewhat common; 4 = scarce; 5 = extremely unique). Every 20% of cumulative percentage each grade was given. Every time I had reached the 20% benchmark, I moved on to the next grade respectively. So, for example for the first 20% of the subcategories I gave the score of 5, then for the next 20% I gave the score of 4, etc. By the end of this coding, each subcategory was placed in the analogous score of this five-point scale. To find the final originality score for each participant, I summed the scores of the ideas which one person gave. After that, I averaged the scores of each participant’s ideas, and I came with the originality score that was used in the analysis.

A second rater was assigned to code a sample of the ideas of 15 participants (181 ideas), which were randomly chosen. The rater used the same categories to code for flexibility and had received also the same subcategories to place each idea. Reliability was sufficient (Cohen’s Kappa = .786; Asymptotic Standard ​Error​ a _{= .033; Approximate T​} b ₌ 26.094; Approximate Significance = .000).

RESULTS

challenge to be negatively related to anxiety/threat, but surprisingly there is a positive relation between challenge and anxiety/threat (​r​ = .187).

As can be seen, creative self-efficacy and motivation have a statistically significant positive relationship (​p < .001, ​r ​= .223), creative self-efficacy and anxiety/threat have a statistically significant negative relationship (​p < .01, ​r ​= -.178), and generalized self-efficacy and anxiety/threat have a statistically significant negative relationship (​p < .05, ​r ​= -.159). Moreover, it is important to mention that motivation has a statistically significant positive relationship with fluency (​p < .001, ​r ​= .221), and also with flexibility (​p < .10, ​r ​= .120), but no with average originality. ​Fluency and Flexibility are strongly related (​p < .001, ​r ​= .707), and the relation of both with Average Originality is actually negative, ​r ​= -.205 with Fluency and​ r​ = -.230 with Flexibility.

TABLE 1

Descriptive Statistics and Correlations

Variables M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1. Manipulation 0.5 0.5 1 2. Creative Self-efficacy 3.75 0.65 -.046 1 3. Generalized Self-efficacy 3.73 0.44 -.121+ .503*** 1 4. Motivation 3.32 1.04 .213*** .233*** .114 1 5. Challenge 3.71 0.94 -.154* -.059 0.78 .229*** 1 6. Anxiety / Threat 2.36 0.87 -.334*** -.178** -.159* -.283*** .187** 1 7. Fluency 13.39 7.17 -.066 .156* .024 .221*** 0.43 -.052 1 8. Flexibility 5.54 1.80 -.056 .060 -.033 .120+ .008 -.055 .707*** 1 9. Average Originality 3.09 1.94 -.075 .009 0.21 .045 .010 .064 -.205** -.230*** 1 Notes. N=231. ​+​ ​p​ < .10; * ​p​ < .05; ** ​p​ < .01; *** ​p​ < .001. Manipulation Check

First, a manipulation check was performed. This showed that 8 people answered the question of whether they had received feedback incorrectly. Five people answered that they did not receive feedback, but they did, and three participants answered that they received feedback but they did not. These eight people were excluded from the pool of participants.

A one-sample T-test revealed that people rated the feedback significantly more negative than the scale middle part of 3, (​M = 1.22, SD = .472, ​MD ​= 1.784), ​t ​value = -40.726. These results indicate that the manipulation was perceived as intended.

Hypotheses testing

This study examines the effect of negative feedback on motivation and anxiety of knowledge workers, when they have high and low self-efficacy, and the effect on their creativity. Negative feedback is the independent variable, there are two different ways in which I measured self-efficacy (moderator; generalized and creative), three different mediators (motivation, challenge, and anxiety/threat), and three different dependent variables measuring creativity (fluency, flexibility and average originality). I therefore ran the same analysis, Moderated Mediation analysis 18 times. I used PROCESS macro by Andrew Hayes, Model 7. The results were quite consistent across the different analyses. For example, I analyzed both generalized self-efficacy and creative self-efficacy as moderators. The results for generalized self-efficacy and the results for creative self-efficacy were similar except for the interaction on anxiety/threat mediator. So, what I report is only the analysis involving generalized self-efficacy. These results are reported in the next two tables with the two different mediators, motivation and anxiety/threat. Results regarding challenge as a mediator are not reported, because the only interesting finding was that negative feedback increased challenge, as it did with anxiety/threat. I expected that challenge will follow the same pattern as motivation, because as cognitive appraisal theory supports if people feel challenged they will be also motivated, but that did not happened for challenge. Moreover, in Tables 1 and 2, there are the three dependent variables, fluency, flexibility, and average originality.

TABLE 2

Effects related to Motivation (as a mediator)

Mediator Model (Motivation) (Coefficient ​β)

Motivation 1.69*** .24* .12 Indirect effect (Motivation) Effect coefficient β (SE) BootLLCI BootULCI Fluency .81 (.32) .32 1.62 Flexibility .11 (.07) .01 .28 Average Originality .06 (.07) -.04 .24 TABLE 3

Effects related to Anxiety/Threat (as a mediator)

Mediator Model (Anxiety/Threat) (Coefficient ​β)

Dependent Variable Model Fluency (Coefficient β) Flexibility (Coefficient β) Av. Originality (Coefficient ​β) Feedback -.62*** -1.34 -.30 -.23 Generalized Self-efficacy -.40** Interaction .53* Anxiety/Threat -.69 -.17 .10 Indirect effect (Anxiety/Threat) Low Generalized SE Effect coefficient β (SE) BootLLCI BootULCI Fluency .59 (.60) -.44 1.91 Flexibility .15 (.13) -.09 .44 Average Originality -.08 (.12) -.42 .25 Indirect effect (Anxiety/Threat) High Generalized SE Effect coefficient β (SE) BootLLCI BootULCI Fluency .27 (.31) -.17 1.14 Flexibility .07 (.07) -.03 .24 Average Originality -.04 (.08) -.26 .10

generalized) nor interaction term were significant. The results are also presented in Table 2. So, Hypothesis 1 is rejected.

For Hypothesis 2, which stated that for knowledge workers, motivation will be positively associated with employee creativity, I found that motivation was related to creative outcomes. As can be found in Table 2, motivation was positively related with two of the three measures of creativity, fluency and flexibility, and these relations were also significant, ​p ​= .0002 and ​p ​= .0410 respectively. Motivation was also positively related with average originality, the third parameter of creativity, but it was not significant (​p = .3433). So, the results support the second hypothesis, for two out of the three creativity parameters, and Hypothesis 2 is party confirmed.

Another way to look at Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 2 is to replace motivation with challenge. This means that negative feedback will make people feel that this is challenging, but only when they have high self-efficacy. For challenge we see something different and interesting: negative feedback actually increases challenge rather than reduces it. However, self-efficacy, both generalized and creative, had no effect and did not interact with feedback to predict challenge, and challenge was not related significantly to creative outcomes. Therefore, when challenge is used as a mediator, both Hypothesis 1 and 2 are rejected.

Hypothesis 3 stated that negative feedback will increase employees’ anxiety but only when self-efficacy is low. Table 3 indicates the results of this analysis, showing that negative feedback had a statistically significant negative relationship with anxiety/threat. Generalized self-efficacy moderated this relation: this relationship became stronger (negative), which means that negative feedback increased anxiety/threat especially for people low in self-efficacy. This pattern confirmed Hypothesis 3, although it should be noted that this is true only for generalized self-efficacy and not for creative self-efficacy.

Hypothesis 4 stated that anxiety will decrease employees’ creativity. Looking at the results in Table 3, there is not significant relation between anxiety/threat and creative outcomes. Although anxiety/threat showed a negative relation with fluency and flexibility but positive relation with average originality, these relationships are not statistically significant. Therefore, the fourth hypothesis is rejected.

but it is not moderated by self-efficacy, because the interaction is not significant. So, there is no evidence for Hypothesis 5a, but rather an indirect effect independent of self-efficacy. Therefore Hypothesis 5a is rejected. Although, there is a negative indirect effect: negative feedback decreased motivation and through motivation reduced fluency and flexibility (Table 2), but this is not moderated by self-efficacy.

Hypothesis 5b stated that there is a negative indirect effect of negative feedback on creativity through anxiety when self-efficacy is low. Table 3, indicate that there is an interaction effect, but the problem is that anxiety/threat does not relate to creativity. Also, the indirect effect is not significant, because the second pathway of anxiety/threat to creativity is not significant. Although there is the interaction effect, anxiety/threat does not translate into creative outcomes, and therefore Hypothesis 5b is rejected.

DISCUSSION

The present study explored the effects of negative feedback on knowledge workers’ creativity, through motivation and anxiety, when employees have high or low self-efficacy. To answer my research question, I conducted a laboratory experiment in the university laboratory and the participants were students. Individuals played a role play and pretended that they were R&D employees. Their self-efficacy was measured, and they worked on two tasks. After the first task, I provided half the participants with negative feedback to observe the effects on their creativity, which I assessed through the second task.

Moderated mediation analysis revealed that some of the hypotheses were confirmed and others were rejected. Firstly, negative feedback affected all the three mediators, motivation, challenge and anxiety/threat, which was something that we expected to happen. Interestingly, negative feedback reduced motivation, but increased both challenge and anxiety/threat. The second finding was that of the three mediators only motivation was related to creative outcomes. More specifically, motivation appeared to have a statistically significant positive relationship with fluency and flexibility, but not with average originality. The last finding was that negative feedback increased anxiety/threat, but only when generalized self-efficacy was low.

effect, the results showed that this wasn’t the case. Indeed, the cognitive appraisal theory of Lazarus and Folkman (1984) argued that employees who perceive a stressor at work as a challenge, are more motivated to work. So, I was expecting that negative feedback would decrease challenge, like motivation, and that challenge and motivation would be positively correlated with each other. However, whereas motivation was undermined by negative feedback, challenge was actually higher after negative feedback, and motivation and challenge were negatively related. One explanation for this might be that the measurement of challenge was not sufficient, because only one item was used, so I couldn’t have a clear picture of how much challenge people felt the second task to be. Further, according to findings, it seems that people who felt more anxious and threatened about the upcoming work tasks, felt also more challenged. This is also confirmed by Table 1, where challenge is positively correlated with anxiety/threat. This is not in line with the cognitive appraisal theory (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), which distinguish challenge and threat, combining challenge with motivation and anxiety with threat. I would explain this observation, exactly as I mentioned before for challenge and the unclear picture of the measurement I used. Another explanation might be that some people might felt ambiguous about the task and experience it both as a challenge or a threat. On the other side, others might to not care, and experience it neither as a challenge nor as a threat.

The findings for the second Hypothesis, which is partly confirmed, showed that motivation was positively related with fluency and flexibility, and not with average originality. This result can be explained, that people in the experiment role play, who translated the negative feedback as an incentive, might felt very enthusiastic and motivated with the next task of generating ideas, which seemed to be like a game of thinking as many ideas as possible, forgetting to think creatively. Most of the participants did not have a high score on originality but they have a higher score on fluency and flexibility. In other words, individuals thought that the more ideas, combined with, the more different categories that the ideas belong, the more creative they would be. Moreover, another way to explain these results is that fluency is more dependent on effort than originality. If motivation affects creativity through effort, I would expect stronger effects on fluency and measures related to fluency (e.g., flexibility).

On the other hand, the other two mediators did not reveal a significant relationship with the three creative outcomes. Anxiety/threat as it is displayed in Table 3, had negative relationships with fluency and flexibility but these were not significant. One explanation for this might be that some people feel more creative when they were expressing anxiety and threat (Martin, Ward, Achee, & Wyer, 1993) while others are not creative when they are anxious (Byron & Khazanchi, 2011). This can explain the results, which perhaps participants were from both above-mentioned categories and this is why I could not find a significant relationship with creative outcomes. Challenge, as well, did not reveal significant relationship with the creative outcomes (Table 1), although, several studies have argued that challenge appraisal is significantly related to creativity (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984, Ohly & Fritz, 2010), these findings did not support them. An explanation of this result might be that, as it is indicated on Table 1, challenge is positively correlated with anxiety/threat and because of this relationship, challenge has no significant relationship with creative outcomes as well.

Implications for theory and practice

also Ilgen, Fisher and Taylor (1979) found that employees respond negatively to critical comments, affecting negatively their psychology and performance, whereas DeNisi and Kluger (2000) argued that negative feedback creates a motive for employees to improve their performance. This study contributes to the existing literature, analyzing how a specific type of negative feedback affect employees’ feelings in the work environment. The findings showed that negative feedback reduced individuals’ motivation, while increased their anxiety. These findings are more in line with those by Tesser et al. (1975) and Ilgen et al. (1979) who had evidence for the negative effects of negative feedback to employees’ behavior and performance.

According to Davenport, Jarvernpaa, and Beers (1996), the role of creativity for knowledge workers is very important, in order to accomplish non-routine tasks and also for their career development. Particularly for this type of jobs, but also for occupations in general, the relationship of negative feedback with creativity is something that should be of interest. Employees’ motivation and creativity can be increased when they face negative evaluation in a collaborative performance context, but also critical comments can decrease creativity, enhancing anxiety (Van Kleef, Anastasopoulou & Nijstad, 2010). According to the findings of this study, there is a negative indirect effect: negative feedback decreased motivation and through motivation reduced fluency and flexibility (Table 2).

However, the study provide some insights for participants who were motivated after the negative evaluation, and their creativity was affected by their motivation. They were more creative on a certain degree, generating many ideas which also belong to many categories. Amabile (1983, 1997) argued that some work suggests that evaluation may undermine (intrinsic) motivation. Given that negative feedback implies evaluation, the findings of this study support Amabile’s study, where people’s motivation was negatively related to negative feedback. On the other hand, Byron and Khazanchi (2011) supported that anxiety decreases creativity, but the findings did not show any relationship to creative outcomes.

anxiety and threat when generalized self-efficacy is low. Also this finding contribute to the fact that it was not clear when negative feedback could lead to anxiety, but now we know that when employees believe that they are not capable of dealing with difficulties at work, they translate negative evaluation as something which makes them anxious and feel threatened.

As for the practical implications, this study may contribute to the way employers, supervisors and generally organizations provide negative feedback to their employees and especially to knowledge workers. It is important to remember that this type of employees, such as researchers and instructors, need to be creative, because this is the nature of their jobs. Also, this type of employees are looking for continuous job assessment, because they want to develop themselves on the job. Managers should provide developmental feedback to workers and be aware of the effects of negative feedback, not only at work but also at individual level. As the theory made clear, people with different levels of self-efficacy will respond differently to their supervisor’s evaluation. As this study mainly demonstrated, negative feedback has negative effects, such as motivation loss, and also for those with low self-efficacy greater feelings of anxiety. It is therefore suggested supervisors, managers, employers and bosses to be very careful when they are dissatisfied by employees’ performance. Knowing the detrimental effects of a critical evaluation, acts as a tool for supervisors, ensuring a more regular operation of the organization and keeping employees satisfied.

Limitations and future research

predicted ways. Secondly, it is important that the effects of negative feedback were observed immediately after feedback was received. It may be the case that the influence would be different if they had more time to interpret the evaluation.

Thirdly, the measurement of challenge, threat, motivation and anxiety had only a few items. For each one there was a question of how much motivated or anxious the participants was feeling that moment, and how they would see the next task of the experiment to be, either as a challenge or as a threat. Therefore, a more reliable measurement of these feelings and perceptions may yield stronger relations with creative outcomes. Using these measurements I could gather only some information for the interpretation of the effects.

Fourthly, there are many ways to express negative feedback. In this present study, it was just pure negative feedback, including only scores, without recommendations for improvements or personal comments. Participants received a message of negative feedback that it was in an evaluative way and not in a very developmental way. In a future study, negative feedback can be expressed in terms of development, in order to examine to what extent participants were affected and if they accepted the recommendations and their evaluator’s comments. By this way, the experimenter will limit the possibility that participants would think that feedback was false, inaccurate or automatic.

Conclusion

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