When children have low self-esteem, many adults try to build them up with supportive words of encouragement. A recent study confirms this by finding that adults tend to give kids with low confidence more inflated praise. But the study also finds that these children may actually shy away from new challenges in the wake of such excessive applause.
Findings of the study, which will be published in the journal Psychological Science, were conducted at Ohio State University by lead author Eddie Brummelman, a visiting scholar from Utrecht University in The Netherlands.
He notes that although previous studies have examined how praise influences children, this recent study is the first to analyze the impact of inflated praise.
"Inflated praise can backfire with those kids who seem to need it the most - kids with low self-esteem," says Brummelman.
For the purposes of his study, he defines inflated praise as small changes in compliments given to children, which often means adding just one extra word. For example, rather than saying "you're good at this," inflated praise would be: "you're incredibly good at this."
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