Gender differences in Response to failure feedback

1. Gender differences in Response to failure feedback Torin Franz, Evan Frick, Katie Hanslits Hanover College

2. Male or Female? • Two high school students received their grades on a history test. Both of the students failed the test. • “I am so depressed and stressed out. I studied so hard for the test and I’m going to have to study even harder for the next one. Great, I have another test today…I’ll probably fail that one too…” • “Yeah I am a little upset, but it is just one grade. I am not going to stress out and make a big deal about it. I have to just get over it and do better on the next one.”

3. Feedback • “[Individuals] responded to positive feedback by increasing their performance expectancies and responded to negative and no feedback by lowering their performance expectancies” (McCarty, 1986) • Performance intentionally decreases as the fear of failure increases. When an individual fails they have something other than ability to blame it on (Thompson & Dinnel, 2007)

4. Gender • There are many biological differences between men and women, specifically stress hormones. The hormones can have different effects depending on gender and how their bodies respond to stressful situations, like receiving failure feedback. (Dedovic, Wadiwalla, Engert, & Pruessner, 2009) • “Studies show that women's self-evaluations are more responsive to the valence of the evaluative feedback they receive than are men's.” Men approach evaluations in a competitive nature whereas women use it to understand how others view them. (Roberts,1991)

5. Hypothesis • Females who received failure feedback will score lower than males who received failure feedback. • Negative feedback leads to worse performance than receiving positive feedback

6. Methods Participants • Obtained through a convenience sample • College age students of all levels • 10 male and 10 female

7. Methods Procedure • Informed Consent • Initial Test • Very difficult • Received false scores • Passing Feedback: above 70% • Failure Feedback: below 50% • Second Test • Simple questions • Actual scores recorded

8. Methods Materials • Test One • Example Questions • The “alula” or “spurious wing” of a bird is homologous with which digit of the human body? • What is the correct spelling of the word that means “fear of hair”? • Test Two • Example Questions • What is the largest South American country by area? • A heptagon is a shape with how many sides?

9. Results Expected Pattern: • Women who received failure feedback would score lower on test two than men who received failure feedback.

10. Scores on Test Two by Gender & Feedback Main Effect for Gender: F(1,16)=5.893,p=.027

11. Results Observed Pattern: • Men performed better than women. • There was no observed effect of feedback. Significance Test • Factorial ANOVA used to measure simple main effects and interaction. Main Effect of Gender • F(1,16)=5.893,p=.027 No Main Effect of Feedback • F (1,16) = .041, p = .841 No Interaction • p = .844

12. Limitations • Participants did not always believe the feedback they received on test one. • Test two seems to favor males as far as their educational strengths because their scores were higher. • Some of the participants talked between tests leading back to not believing their scores on Test One. • Our sample was not representative of the population as a whole.

13. Future Directions • Change test one and test two. • Test one: questions would be more ambiguous and harder to determine what your actual score may be. • Test two: We would need to make it more unbiased towards men. • Sample • Get a larger sample for statistical power. • Comparing effects among other cultures. Values among in women in other cultures may not focus on peer evaluation. These women would care less about the feedback they receive.