The Effect of Normative Feedback on Goal Orientation and Learning of Dart Throwing

Background: The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of positive and negative normative feedback on goal orientation (task orientation and ego orientation) and darts throwing learning in young girls.
Method: Thirty-five young girls with a mean age of 22.7 (±1.5) were divided into 3 groups of positive, negative, and control normative. After 9 trials as a pretest, participants practiced 60 darts throwing trails in 2 sessions (30 throws per session, 10 sets of 3 trails) and after 24 hours, retention and transfer tests were taken and participants completed a goal orientation questionnaire in the post-test again.
Results: The results of the mixed analysis of variance test 3 (group) * 4 (test) showed that the normative feedback had no significant effect on reducing the two-dimensional variable error (VE) of dart throwing (P <0.05) and no difference was observed between the groups in the test stages. However, all groups showed a reduction in radial error (RE) during the learning. Also, the participants' task orientation did not change during the experimental period, but ego orientation increased significantly from pretest to posttest (P <0.05).
Conclusion: These results show that normative feedback (positive or negative) can negatively affect people's ego orientation and increase the importance of superiority and comparison of their performance over others in the individual.