The praise paradox: When and why praise backfires in children with low self-esteem

In contemporary Western society, many adults use praise to boost children's self-esteem. Accordingly, they might praise those who seem to need it the most: children with low self-esteem. In this article, we review research showing that certain types of praise can backfire, especially in children with low self-esteem. Adults are inclined to give children with low self-esteem person praise (e.g., “You're smart!”) and inflated praise (e.g., “That's incredibly beautiful!”). Paradoxically, such praise can lower these children's motivation and feelings of self-worth in the face of setbacks (e.g., when they struggle or fail). Lowered feelings of self-worth, in turn, might invite more person praise and inflated praise from adults, creating a self-sustaining downward spiral. We propose a transactional model to shed light on this apparent praise paradox, and we describe the model's implications for theory and research

Proudly moving forward and feeling connected: Adolescents’ daily temporal comparisons relate to a desire for growth and sense of relatedness

Adolescents often compare themselves favorably to others. Although such downward social comparisons make adolescents feel proud, they entail the risk of focusing adolescents on outperforming others rather than on improving themselves. This daily diary study (N = 389 adolescents, ages 11–15) tested the hypothesis that downward temporal comparisons—comparing one’s present self favorably to one’s past self, rather than to others—may elicit pride while encouraging adolescents to strive for self-improvement rather than superiority. Such a desire for self-improvement may, in turn, cultivate a sense of relatedness. Results show that daily downward and upward comparisons co-occurred with pride and shame, respectively, regardless of whether those comparisons were social or temporal. Importantly, daily downward temporal comparisons (unlike daily downward social comparisons) co-occurred with a desire for self-improvement over superiority as well as with a sense of relatedness. This desire for self-improvement over superiority partially mediated the association between downward temporal comparison and a sense of relatedness. Together, these findings underline the role of social and temporal comparisons in self-conscious emotions and goal pursuit and suggest that temporal comparisons—unlike social comparisons—may help adolescents strive for personal growth and build satisfying relationships

“I’m not here to push you:” Raising adolescents’ treatment engagement via autonomy support

More than 45% of adolescents with aggressive behavior problems drop out of treatment prematurely. Building on insights from self-determination theory, we examined in three studies whether clinicians can raise adolescents' treatment engagement by supporting their autonomy. In an interview study (Study 1), clinicians (N = 16; 43.8% female; ages 30–57) spontaneously described 12 times more autonomy-supportive than controlling strategies to engage adolescents. In a preregistered experiment (Study 2), clinicians (N = 68; 88.2% female; ages 23–65) were confronted with videos of adolescents displaying resistance. We manipulated the DSM diagnosis of adolescents to indicate either aggressive behavior problems or other problems. We found that, regardless of diagnosis, clinicians used both autonomy-supportive strategies (57.7% of responses) and controlling strategies (39.3%), suggesting that applying autonomy support can be challenging with any adolescent displaying resistance. In an experimental study (Study 3), adolescents (N = 252; 50.0% female; ages 12–17) reported higher therapeutic alliance (d = 0.95, 95% CI [0.80, 1.10]) and treatment engagement (d = 0.77, 95% CI [0.63, 0.91]) after listening to audio-recorded autonomy-supportive versus controlling responses from clinicians, regardless of whether these adolescents had aggressive behavior problems. Overall, this research suggests that clinicians can raise adolescents’ treatment engagement through autonomy support