Perhaps the most apt person to discredit when faced with difficult feedback is the person who provides it. As Harvard academics Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen astutely observed in their book Thanks for the Feedback, “When we give feedback, we notice that the receiver isn’t good at receiving it. When we receive feedback, we notice that the giver isn’t good at giving it.” In this spirit, when a critical reviewer recently informed one of us that our research paper would have been “better with more effert” (sic), it was highly tempting to note the critic’s poor spelling, and surmise that they were just incompetent. Who would trust the judgment of someone who can’t even spell? Reacting this way wouldn’t push us to improve the paper, of course, but it would certainly be far easier and would numb the pain.

Discrediting the feedback-giver is not always enough, though, and the next step might be to actively blame them for our failures. In fact, the way we blame feedback-givers can sometimes uncover our most unpalatable of prejudices. In a study conducted at the University of Waterloo in Canada, students reported the grades they had received in various courses, and rated the quality of the teachers who gave them those grades. The results showed that students who performed poorly tended to minimise their loss of face by blaming their teachers: the lower the grades they received, the more they judged the teaching as low-quality. But crucially, unlike their high-performing classmates, the poorly performing students were especially critical of teachers who were female. In their search for ways to discredit their teachers, these students apparently discovered that discriminatory sexist attitudes can be an effective tool of blame.

‘Emotional armour’

It seems that even the most useful feedback can bring out our worst sides. But are these defensive reactions to feedback inevitable, or can we avoid them? It stands to reason that if we could, then we would often be far better equipped to reach our goals. After all, feedback is one of the strongest influences on our development, yet we can only ever benefit from advice that we listen to.

The trouble is that none of our options really seem very appealing: failing to reach our goals makes us feel bad, but so does hearing critique that could help us to achieve those goals. If we are so afraid of damaging our self-esteem, though, then perhaps the solution to this dilemma is to reflect on why we feel so positively about ourselves in the first place. Indeed, research suggests that people are more open to receiving diagnostic medical feedback – such as by getting tested for the fictional TAA Deficiency – if they first think about the positive traits they most value in themselves, and remember past occasions when they demonstrated those traits. This finding fits with the broader, perhaps predictable, picture that people who already experience high self-esteem are generally better than their less-assured counterparts at seeking feedback from others.