From APM, American Public Media, and WNYC,

this is Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace.

Here's the host of Marketplace, Kyra's Doll.

Tom now for a little Freakonomics radio.

It's that moment every couple of weeks we talked to Stephen Dumbner,

the co-author of the books and the blog of the same name.

The hidden side of everything is what he does. Dumbner, welcome back.

Hey, Ky, thanks for having me back.

Last month, we New Yorkers lost a legend for Congressmen in Mayor Ed Koch.

Now, Koch was unique in a few ways, including the fact that he actively solicited feedback from the public.

Just serendipitously on one occasion, I said, I made Koch, I'm your congressman.

How am I doing? People stopped to tell me.

And I knew I was on to something.

So, Ky, this got me to thinking about feedback generally.

It strikes me that a lot of people say they want feedback, but I'm not sure they really do,

especially if there's a chance it'll be negative feedback.

No, man, who wants to be told they're doing something wrong?

Forget it.

That's probably right.

But the fact is that if you really want to get better at something,

it's hard to do that without feedback, whether it's your job, or that sport, or schoolwork.

So I wanted to know the latest academic thinking on feedback.

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