Gender Differences in the Effect of Subjective Supervisory Feedback

Introduction:

We estimate the effect of positive subjective feedback, in the form of encouragement and praise, on the perseverance and performance of individuals, and specifically, gender differences in these effects.

Methods:

We carry out our analysis using data gathered from an online game, in which players are randomly chosen to be given either no subjective feedback (control), or positive subjective feedback (treatment). We analyze the performance (score) of players, their perseverance and effort (number of games and clicks within a game) and their accuracy by feedback type, gender, and by self-reported task-related confidence.

Results:

The results point to the existence of the gender differences in the effect of the subjective content of feedback. Encouragement has a positive impact on women, who lay more games and reach higher scores, while men are impacted negatively. On the other hand, praise has a negative effect on the performance of women, and no effect on men. Subsample analysis by task-related confidence level reveals that the effects of encouragement are driven by those with low pre-game confidence.

Discussion:

The results draw attention to the importance of the subjective content of supervisory feedback, which is an important element of the psychosocial work environment and also conducive to positive self-experience. The results suggest that more individualized subjective content can improve the persistence, effort, and performance of individuals, and play a role in decreasing gender gaps in participation and performance.