Ask for Feedback While the Failure Still Stings
Why the best time to examine what went wrong is as soon as possible
Think back to the last time you played a new video game. Maybe you beat the first level fairly quickly, but imagine you’re trying to master a new video game. You beat the first level fairly quickly, but you get a little stuck on the second. There’s an obstacle you can’t figure out how to get through, or an on-screen opponent who gets the best of you, and you lose.
But this time, starting again from the beginning, you know exactly where you went wrong. And when you get to level two again, you try something different. You might not get to level three right away, but you make a little progress. And the next time, you make a little more.
That cycle of losing and trying again and again until you win is part of what makes video games so addicting. It’s also a perfect illustration of the value of instant feedback.
“Knowing right away, ‘This is reality, I failed’ causes strong motivating feelings,” says Jenny Jiao, an assistant professor of marketing at Binghamton University’s School of Management. In a recent study in the Journal of Consumer Behavior, Jiao and her co-author Catherine Cole, a marketing professor at the University of Iowa, found that people who get immediate feedback…
