What is Feedback on behavior?
Feedback on behavior provides a person with information about their performance of the target behavior itself (frequency, duration, intensity, quality) rather than about the outcomes the behavior produces.
How it works
Behavioral feedback works through self-regulation: it provides the comparison data needed to detect discrepancies between current behavior and goals. The feedback must be timely (close to the behavior), specific (about the exact behavior, not general performance), and actionable (the person can adjust based on it). Feedback is most effective when it shows trends over time rather than single data points, because trends reveal whether behavior is improving, stable, or declining.
Applied example
A running app that shows a person their average pace per mile, weekly mileage trend, and consistency streak is providing behavior feedback. This is different from outcome feedback (weight loss, race time), because it focuses on the behavior itself, which is under direct control.
Why it matters
Behavior feedback keeps people calibrated on what they are actually doing versus what they think they are doing, closing the perception-reality gap that causes many behavior change efforts to drift off course.
