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The next time you feel an urge to give feedback on a particular situation, you might want to resist from doing so. 

According to a psychology expert from the University of London, people who give positive positive encouragement and constructive criticism could be wasting their breath. 

Researchers found that when people received either positive or negative feedback about their performance on complex decision-making tasks, it made their decision making worse.

The study is published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience,. 

According to study author Magda Osman, when people received positive or negative feedback while performing a difficult or demanding task, it overloaded them with too much information and distracted them from making a good decision.

"We found that people's performance got worse when they had to make sense of the feedback they were given while also performing the main task," Osman said. "The role of feedback is over-emphasized. People typically think that any form of feedback should improve performance in many tasks, and the more frequently it is given, the better performance will be. However what needs to be considered is how complex the task is in the first place, because this will determine how much feedback will actually interfere with rather than facilitate performance."

Researchers gave 100 people the task of choosing how best to either predict or control the state of health of a baby, revealing that feedback can play a negative role in a particularly complex decision-making scenario.

Osman said managers need to be aware of the type of feedback they are providing to their staff.

"We have shown that feedback really doesn't help people who are making complex decisions, Osman said. "People in management positions need to give their staff more time to analyze and evaluate things in detail when dealing with difficult situations so they can come up with solutions without any distractions in order to get the best out of them."

Osman's work is in direct contrast with that of Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman who writes in his popular book, "Thinking, Fast and Slow," that feedback is good.

"My work shows that feedback alone is not enough to ensure success in decision making," Osman said. "I may not be popular for my research into the role of feedback in complex decision-making tasks but I hope it will make some people think twice about whether they could potentially hinder people's performance with the feedback they provide."