'Just Letting You Know…': Underestimating Others' Desire for Constructive Feedback

People often avoid giving feedback to others even when it would help fix a problem immediately. Indeed, in a pilot field study (N=155), only 2.6% of individuals provided feedback to survey administrators that the administrators had food or marker on their faces. Five experiments (N=1,984) identify a possible reason for the lack of feedback: people underestimate how much others want to receive constructive feedback. We examine two reasons why people might underestimate others' desire for feedback: considerations about their own experience (e.g., anticipating discomfort giving feedback or a harmed relationship with the receiver) and/or considerations about the receiver's experience (e.g., anticipating discomfort receiving feedback or the feedback not being valuable). In Experiment 1, participants underestimated others' desire for feedback across multiple situations. This underestimation persisted when participants recalled giving feedback (Experiment 2) and when participants gave live feedback to their relationship partners in the laboratory (Experiment 3). Experiment 4 tests two interventions to make feedback-givers more accurate: taking the receiver's perspective (making feedback-givers consider the receiver's experience more) or having someone else provide the feedback (making feedback-givers consider their own experience less). Both interventions led to more accurate estimates of receivers' desire for feedback, but the perspective-taking intervention increased accuracy most. Finally, Experiment 5 showed that underestimating others' desire for feedback was associated with giving less feedback in a public speaking contest and less improvement in the feedback-receiver's performance. People's tendency to underestimate others' desire for feedback can lead them to withhold feedback that could be helpful.