The Role of Regulatory Fit in Framing Effective Negative Feedback Across Cultures. (June 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kung, Franki Y. H.; Kim, Young-Hoon; Yang, Daniel Y.-J.; Cheng, Shirley Y. Y.
• Is Part Of: Journal of cross-cultural psychology. Volume 47:Number 5(2016)
• Page Start: 696
• Page End: 712
• Publication Date: 2016-06
• Subjects: culture -- regulatory fit -- motivation -- message framing -- negative feedback; Ethnopsychology -- Periodicals; 155.805
• DOI: 10.1177/0022022116638172
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0022-0221

Abstract

Giving effective negative feedback is not only important but also challenging. Often people struggle as to how ; and perhaps even more so when the feedback receiver comes from a different culture . Building on the regulatory fit theory, the current research examined how negative feedback framing (gain- vs. loss framed) would affect feedback receivers' motivation as a function of their regulatory focus. We found that European Americans were in general more promotion-focused than Chinese (Study 1) and Indians (Study 2), such that promotion-focused (vs. prevention-focused) participants showed higher motivation after receiving gain-framed (vs. loss-framed) negative feedback. Across two studies, with student and work samples, our findings answered the question of how to give more effective negative feedback and suggested that regulatory fit can be a universal strategy for increasing motivation across the East and West.