Teachers’ negative emotional feedback can facilitate students’ learning: the role of epistemic motivation in undertaking divergent- and convergent-thinking tasks

Epistemic motivation, which is the desire to understand the environment and others' emotions more accurately, influences individuals' behaviour. To explore the role of university students' epistemic motivation in learning, I examined the interaction effects of teachers' emotional feedback type (positive vs. negative) × students' epistemic motivation level (high vs. low) × task type (divergent vs. convergent) on enjoyment, effort, feedback perception and performance. Regardless of task type, students in the high epistemic motivation condition showed higher task effort and performance, whereas students in the low epistemic motivation condition showed lower task enjoyment when receiving negative emotional feedback. The students who undertook a divergent-thinking task in the low epistemic motivation condition and received negative (vs. positive) emotional feedback perceived that the feedback was less helpful in improving their performance. This study indicates that the effects of negative emotional feedback on learning can be differentiated by students' epistemic motivation level and task type.