Responding to Critical Feedback by Challenging Pessimistic Attributions: A Cognitive Tool for the Dissertation Journey

Introduction

All students should expect to receive critical feedback from their teachers. Indeed, formative assessment is one of the most significant predictors of students’ learning and achievement (Marzano, 2007). Thus, teachers (at all grade levels) should give students feedback that highlights student errors and misconceptions. This is especially true during the journey of graduate studies, when critical and constructive feedback is especially vital to students’ learning and academic progress (Caffarella & Barnett, 2000; Heinze & Heinze, 2009; Wang & Li, 2011).

However, in order for this feedback to be productive, students must perceive this formative feedback as helpful rather than as discouraging. Specifically, even when teachers take the time and effort to provide students with meaningful, critical feedback that highlights students’ errors and misconceptions, this feedback may be unproductive if students perceive this feedback to be an authoritative judgment of their overall ability. This chapter explores how the manner in which graduate students interpret the critical feedback they receive is critical to their progress during their studies and their dissertation work.

In this chapter, the authors explore the interpretation of feedback through the framework of attributional style (see Peterson, Semmel, Von Baeyer, Abramson, Metalsky, & Seligman, 1982). Much research has shown that the attribution that an individual makes for an event (i.e., Why did this event happen?) influences an individual’s emotional reaction to the event as well as how the individual subsequently responds to the event through behavior (Connor-Smith & Flachsbart, 2007; Gohm & Clore, 2002; Joseph, Williams, & Yule, 1992).

Cognitive psychologist Martin Seligman (2006) identified two distinct attributional styles: an optimistic style, in which the individual attributes adversity to external, variable (i.e., subject to change), and specific causes, and, in contrast, a pessimistic style, in which adversities are attributed to internal, stable, and global (i.e., generalized) causes (see also Dweck, 2006). For example, if a student fails an exam, this student may make pessimistic attributions by concluding that this failing grade indicates that he or she possesses low academic ability and that he or she is likely to do poorly in the future. For example, the student may conclude, “I’m not smart…I don’t have what it takes to be successful.” When attributions of this kind are made, it is unlikely that the student will extend extra effort towards improving for the next exam, precisely because the student has concluded that such efforts are likely to be useless. In other words, if the student’s failure is due to an internal and stable trait – i.e., if the failure is interpreted to be a function of low ability rather than a function of lack of effort – then future failure may be anticipated as unavoidable.

In contrast, an optimistic attribution to the adversity of failing an exam would be to attribute the failure to an external and variable cause. For example, maybe the student recognizes that he or she did not study sufficiently or did not get enough sleep before the exam. If this explanation is accepted, then the student can anticipate that improved study habits will prevent future failure. If students make optimistic attributions in response to their academic adversities, then these students may be optimistic about the future (e.g., “I now know what I need to do to be successful, and, once I do those things, I will be successful next time”). Given that these students believe that their efforts will have a direct impact on their future success, they may be more likely to persevere in their studies.