Do Physicians Improve More from Positive or Negative Feedback?

Manasvini Singh () and Jacob Zureich ()
Additional contact information
Manasvini Singh: Social and Decision Sciences Department, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213
Jacob Zureich: Accounting Department, College of Business, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania 18015

Management Science, 2025, vol. 71, issue 5, 4198-4222

Abstract: We use clinical data on more than 240,000 surgeries and quasi-experimental methods to examine how physicians respond to the surprise release of a performance “report card.” Such feedback interventions are commonly used to encourage physicians to improve performance yet show limited evidence of success. Our results show that these limited effects mask heterogeneous behavioral responses to feedback valence. In particular, physicians improve more from positive feedback than from negative feedback, with negative feedback even reducing performance for a nontrivial share of patients. Experiments with laypersons replicate these results and show that struggles with negative feedback can be mitigated by giving incentives directly tied to improvement and by adding qualitative information that helps individuals interpret past performance. These results are consistent with behavioral models that suggest cognitive and emotional difficulties limit how well individuals use negative feedback. Thus, feedback interventions in healthcare should be carefully designed to mitigate these counterproductive behavioral responses.

Keywords: accounting; healthcare; healthcare: treatment; learning; feedback (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.01340 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:71:y:2025:i:5:p:4198-4222

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().