Motivation by Anticipation

We have all waited to receive evaluations of our performance. Indeed, feedback on some of life’s most consequential endeavors—such as writing exams, developing business proposals, and preparing manuscripts for publication—arrives with substantial delay. Although the importance of feedback in learning and other domains is well recognized (e.g., Schmidt & Bjork, 1992), the question of whether people’s performance is influenced by when they expect to receive feedback on it has not been examined previously. When anticipated feedback is more proximate, so is the threat of disappointment—the negative affect experienced when an outcome falls short of expectations (van Dijk, Zeelenberg, & van der Pligt, 2003). The desire to avoid disappointment is a powerful motivator, leading people to alter their choices (Mellers, 2000), lower their expectations (Carroll, Sweeny, & Shepperd, 2006; Shepperd, Ouellette, & Fernandez, 1996), and intensify their efforts to perform well (Norem & Cantor, 1986). Thus, we hypothesized that the mere anticipation of more proximate feedback would cause people to perform better. We tested this hypothesis in a field experiment involving a highly consequential behavior: individual presentations in a university course. Each student gave a 4-min oral presentation that was peer-graded. The course comprised seven sections. Within each section, students were randomly assigned to a presentation date; typically, 10 students made presentations in each class session. All students in the audience rated each presentation on a scale from 0 (poor) to 10 (excellent). The mean of these ratings formed the presenter’s grade for this component of the course.