A novel vignette measure for assessing adolescent responses to positive, negative, neutral and constructive peer feedback

Introduction: Peer feedback plays a critical role in adolescents’ socio-emotional development, shaping emotional responses and social functioning. While positive feedback enhances well-being, negative feedback is often linked to self-criticism and distress. Yet, real-life interactions also include nuanced forms of feedback—such as neutral remarks and constructive input—that are poorly captured by traditional paradigms dichotomizing feedback into positive vs negative. Prior research has also largely focused on global psychological outcomes (e.g., self-esteem, depression), overlooking diverse emotional reactions (e.g., pride, guilt, motivation) that peer feedback can elicit.Methods: To address these gaps, we developed a novel vignette-based measure to assess adolescents’ emotional and motivational responses to positive, negative, neutral, and constructive peer feedback. The measure was administered to 67 Portuguese adolescents (aged 14–18 years, 51% female) from the general community.Results: Repeated-measures ANOVAs revealed significant differences across feedback types for all emotions (ps < .01). Positive feedback elicited the highest levels of happiness and pride, and the lowest sadness, shame, and anger. Negative feedback produced the strongest negative emotions. Constructive feedback generated relatively high happiness and motivation but also moderate guilt and shame. Neutral feedback was most associated with indifference and muted emotional responses.Conclusions: These findings support the measure’s sensitivity in capturing distinct emotional responses across feedback types. Notably, it captures the motivational benefits of constructive feedback alongside its moderate elicitation of negative emotions, and the muted, indifferent responses to neutral feedback. This highlights the utility of the measure for advancing understanding of how adolescents process diverse peer interactions.Keywords: Adolescence, Vignette measure, Peer feedback, response to peer feedback