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Feedback
Can you correct what you've done if you don't know what you did?
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Consider an example. On a production line, you might compare the output with a desired result, to see if a product meets specs. You could have a measuring device that determines the difference between the actual and the desired outcome. The data provides feedback to make an adjustment.
Another interpretation of feedback is the return of information about a process. For example, students might fill out a form to say what they thought about a course. Or you might learn how far off its mark a gunshot was to its target, or how far off a tennis drive was to its intended placement. The feedback evaluates the activity, telling you how good or bad it was so you can make corrections.
Either way, feedback lets you know how well something or other is being done. It lets you correct for errors. In this respect it applies to almost everything you might do, and you may experience both negative and positive feedback. In this site we look at feedback as it's used in the study of skills, and as it occurs in the training of skills. Click here for more.
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Negative feedback doesn't mean that return information is disapproving or that it's personally downgrading. On the contrary, negative feedback could be very good in that sense.
Rather, feedback of the negative variety helps to decrease differences between actual results and what you are trying to achieve. It's defined as negative only in that it subtracts from existing differences. It serves to bring you closer to desired results. It reduces differences between what you have and what you're trying to get. Negative feedback keeps things under control.
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In the same sense that negative feedback can be good, so too positive feedback can be bad. "Positive" means that the feedback acts in the direction of existing differences between the actual and the desired. That is, it exaggerates the differences and creates problems. With positive feedback things could get way out of control, even chaotic.
The qualifiers "negative" and "positive" apply only to the effects of the feedback on the output of the system or process. The qualifiers are therefore really opposite in meaning to what you might at first expect.
So feedback that actually keeps a process under control is called negative feedback, though this isn't intended to be derogatory. Similarly, feedback that sends a system or process wildly out of control is called positive, even though this result of the processes is generally bad or undesired.
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