Sex Differences in Response to Evaluative Feedback: A Field Study

Abstract

We investigated sex differences in response to evaluative feedback among bank employees who were going through the annual performance evaluation process. Questionnaires were mailed to employees before and after they had their face-to-face evaluation with their supervisor. Women and men received similar evaluation scores. Men's self-esteem was relatively unaffected by the nature of the feedback, whereas women's self-esteem slightly improved after positive feedback and substantially dropped after negative feedback. After the evaluations, women reported greater intentions to change their behavior based on the evaluation. However, this finding was accounted for by men's higher job status relative to women. The findings for self-esteem were partly explained by women's greater agreement with the feedback compared to men. Future research should explore how the nature of the supervisee-supervisor relationship influences how women and men respond to feedback.