Feedback About Personal and Organizational Outcomes and Its Effect on Persistence of Planned Behavioral Changes

The success of a wide range of organization intervention techniques is the result of the ability of the technique to be successful in producing new work behavior. There is a need to develop a general theoretical framework for the problem of assessing the creation of persistent changes in work behavior through planned intervention techniques. An examination of the impact of knowledge of results, or feedback, on persistence is also important.Subjects were chosen from a small, technically oriented eastern university (70 undergraduate students-49 males and 21 females). The subject's task was to locate typographical errors that had been randomly positioned in a 17-page manuscript consisting of feature articles from past issues of Newsweek. The primary objective was to investigate the effects of instrumental feedback on the decision to persist at a newly introduced work strategy and on the durability of communicated beliefs about change. Confirming and disconfirming feedback about the anticipated outcomes of a behavior influences the decision to persist only when the outcomes are valued. The content of feedback, and not its presence, influences behavior and beliefs. Feedback has an impact on the strength of beliefs to which it is targeted. When no other feedback is available, it may transfer to beliefs about outcomes that are indirectly associated with the instrumental feedback.