The Effects of Negative Feedback on Law Enforcement Performance

The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of negative feedback on future performance in law enforcement. Research suggests individuals often experience decrements in performance when given the opportunity to confirm negative beliefs about themselves. When given the opportunity to confirm these negative beliefs individuals may experience performance impairing anxiety or reduce the effort put into occupational tasks. This study hypothesized that receiving negative performance related feedback would lead to a reduction in future performance. Participants were law enforcement personnel who received either negative or neutral feedback on their performance on a micro expression recognition task prior to completing an accuracy based shooting task. Results and implications are presented and discussed.