Assignment 3 Draft

Introduction

Criticism is one of the few things everyone receives regardless of age, gender, ethnicity and other factors used to differentiate people. When you were a child, your parents may have scolded you for the way you were playing with your food. As you grow older, you may have been criticized by your teachers for solving a math problem incorrectly or for using the wrong grammatical tense. All these forms of criticism genuinely seemed to be provided with intentions of aiding your growth in a given subject whether it be to eat properly, solve math problems correctly or write grammatically correct. However, as with many things, the way people criticize others can get out of hand. From strictly intentions of helping one another, people have started to critique others as a way of putting them down. Critiques surrounding one’s appearance have increased especially with the presence of social media. As these forms of critiques ultimately have a negative impact on one’s mental being, it brings to question, to what extent is criticism necessary and effective in building one’s character. 

In terms of building one’s character, criticism often helps people understand what they need to improve on. It also helps establish social cues for people as they’re growing up. People discover that it is wrong to talk negatively about someone in front of their face because their parents have told them not to do so. People have also learned not to leave a mess after leaving a building or home because their parents have told theme to clean up after themselves. Because of these examples, I believe that criticism is detrimental in people’s growth’s, but I understand that the delivery of the criticism being provided can impact how criticism is perceived by the person receiving the criticism. 

Constructive criticism 

Studies have shown that criticism provided in a positive environment helped people become more accepting of criticism. In other words, people were able to gain positive improvements with feedback if the feedback itself was constructive and the environment where the feedback was given was positive. This was evident in “Negative Effects of Destructive Criticism: Impact on Conflict, Self-Efficacy, and Task Performance” as Robert A. Baron concluded that his study showed that undergraduates who received specific constructive feedback that didn’t blame them for their mistakes were more accepting of the feedback they received. This statement is not a one time thing, as Heather Stringer reiterates this sentiment in her article “ Constructive criticism that works.”  In her article she addresses a scenario where leaders given feedback in an unsupportive environment didn’t improve much on what they were being critiqued on, whereas leaders given feedback in a positive environment improved what they were being critiqued on. This goes to show that when criticism is given right, it can provide immense positive improvement for those who receive the criticism. 

Destructive Criticism 

Apart from that fact that giving constructive criticism helps people improve from their mistakes, it is important to provide constructive criticism because providing destructive criticism actually causes much harm to those on the receiving end of this destructive criticism. In a study conducted by Nishita Berla, Virginia Peisch, Abigail Thacher, Jennifer Pearlstein, Claire Dowdle, Shauna Geraghty and Victoria Cosgrove, they found out that parents and children who have bad communication lead children to have increased symptoms of depression. In other words, it is important for parents to be careful about what they say to their children. Putting it into perspective, if a parent is providing criticism in a negative way to their kids, it can essentially cause their kid to feel negative emotions that lead to a depressive state. This statement is backed up in “ Why criticism lasts longer than praise” as Sarah Griffiths tells readers people are prone to the negative news and information in our lives due to a negative bias.