Remember those professors in college who dumped 4 long exam results at the end of the last meeting, or even worse those professors who didn’t give results at all. Well there is now empirical evidence that they were hurting your performance.
Kettle and Haubl asked 271 students to give a four-minute presentation as part of a university course. Their performance would be judged by their peers and it would count towards their final grade. The students were told about the date of their presentation and when they would hear about the results, with waiting times ranging from a few hours to 17 days later.
The duo found that students who anticipated the quickest feedback achieved the higher grades. On average, those who knew they would hear back later on in the day scored within the top 40% of the group. Those who thought they would hear back 17 days later received scores that skirted the bottom 40%. It seems that even the anticipation of quicker feedback can boost performance.
via Quicker feedback for better performance : Not Exactly Rocket Science.