On Feeding Those Hungry for Praise: Person Praise Backfires in Children With Low Self-Esteem

Abstract

Child-rearing experts have long believed that praise is an effective means to help children with low self-esteem feel better about themselves. But should one praise these children for who they are, or for how they behave? Study 1 (N = 357) showed that adults are inclined to give children with low self-esteem more person praise (i.e., praise for personal qualities) but less process praise (i.e., praise for behavior) than they give children with high self-esteem. This inclination may backfire, however. Study 2 (N = 313; Mage = 10.4 years) showed that person praise, but not process praise, predisposes children, especially those with low self-esteem, to feel ashamed following failure. Consistent with attribution theory, person praise seems to make children attribute failure to the self. Together, these findings suggest that adults, by giving person praise, may foster in children with low self-esteem the very emotional vulnerability they are trying to prevent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).

Full text

BRIEF REPORT
On Feeding Those Hungry for Praise: Person Praise Backfires in Children
With Low Self-Esteem
Eddie Brummelman
Utrecht University
Sander Thomaes
Utrecht University and University of Southampton
Geertjan Overbeek, Bram Orobio de Castro, and
Marcel A. van den Hout
Utrecht University
Brad J. Bushman
The Ohio State University and VU University Amsterdam
Child-rearing experts have long believed that praise is an effective means to help children with low
self-esteem feel better about themselves. But should one praise these children for who they are, or for
how they behave? Study 1 (N!357) showed that adults are inclined to give children with low
self-esteem more person praise (i.e., praise for personal qualities) but less process praise (i.e., praise for
behavior) than they give children with high self-esteem. This inclination may backfire, however. Study
2(N!313; M
age
!10.4 years) showed that person praise, but not process praise, predisposes children,
especially those with low self-esteem, to feel ashamed following failure. Consistent with attribution
theory, person praise seems to make children attribute failure to the self. Together, these findings suggest
that adults, by giving person praise, may foster in children with low self-esteem the very emotional
vulnerability they are trying to prevent.
Keywords: person praise, process praise, self-esteem, shame, failure
Praise, like penicillin, must not be administered haphazardly. (Ginott,
1965, p. 39)
Many adults use praise as “emotional nourishment” for children,
in an attempt to help children feel better about themselves. Adults
might therefore be especially likely to praise those children who
seem to need it the most— children with low self-esteem. Accord-
ingly, child-rearing experts typically believe that children with low
self-esteem benefit most from praise (e.g., Talbot, 2009;Youngs,
1991). We propose, however, that certain forms of praise can
backfire, especially in children with low self-esteem.
Person Praise and Process Praise
Child-rearing experts have long believed that praise is invari-
ably beneficial to children’s psychological functioning. Yet, the-
orists have proposed that the effects of praise may depend on how
such praise is phrased. In particular, theorists have distinguished
between person praise—praise directed at a child’s personal qual-
ities (e.g., ability)—and process praise—praise directed at a
child’s behavior (e.g., effort; Ginott, 1965;Kamins & Dweck,
1999). For example, when children succeed at an academic task,
they can be praised for their ability (e.g., “You’re so smart!”) or
for their effort (e.g., “You worked really hard!”). Research has
shown that when children later make a mistake on the same
academic task, those who were praised for ability experience
more negative affect and evaluate themselves more negatively
(Cimpian, Arce, Markman, & Dweck, 2007;Kamins & Dweck,
1999;Mueller & Dweck, 1998). These findings suggest that
person praise might backfire when children fail.
What may explain this adverse effect of person praise? One
theory proposes that person praise directs children’s attention
toward the self (Lewis, 1992). If children then fail, they may be
more likely to attribute the failure to the self (e.g., “I’m not smart
enough”) than to their behavior (e.g., “I didn’t work hard
enough”). Such negative self-attributions are more painful than
negative attributions of one’s behavior (e.g., Tangney & Dearing,
2002). Another theory holds that person praise implies conditional
regard, conveying to children that they are valued as a person only
This article was published Online First February 18, 2013.
Eddie Brummelman, Department of Psychology, Utrecht University,
Utrecht, the Netherlands; Sander Thomaes, Department of Psychology,
Utrecht University, and School of Psychology, University of Southampton,
Southampton, England; Geertjan Overbeek, Bram Orobio de Castro, and
Marcel A. van den Hout, Department of Psychology, Utrecht University;
Brad J. Bushman, School of Communication and Department of Psychol-
ogy, The Ohio State University, and Department of Communication Sci-
ence, VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
This research was supported by a grant from the Netherlands Organiza-
tion for Scientific Research (431-09-022).
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Eddie
Brummelman, Department of Psychology, Utrecht University, P.O. Box
80.140, 3508 TC, Utrecht, the Netherlands. E-mail: e.brummelman@uu.nl
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General © 2013 American Psychological Association
2014, Vol. 143, No. 1, 9–14 0096-3445/14/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0031917
9

when they succeed (Assor, Roth, & Deci, 2004;Kamins & Dweck,
1999). When children subsequently fail, they may infer they are
unworthy. Thus, person praise may make children feel that they
must continuously prove that they are worthwhile—a mind-set that
makes them emotionally vulnerable to failure.
Self-Esteem and Praise
Do adults dole out person and process praise to all children
alike? Surprisingly, no empirical data have addressed this impor-
tant question. Several researchers have argued that adults often
praise children with the intention of raising their self-esteem (e.g.,
Damon, 1996;Hewitt, 1998;Twenge, 2006). When children have
low self-esteem, it seems particularly intuitive for adults to praise
these children for who they are. After all, such person praise
directly contradicts these children’s insecurities— unlike process
praise, which is not focused on children’s worth as a person.
Adults might therefore be specifically inclined to give children
with low self-esteem more person praise than they give children
with high self-esteem.
But does person praise ultimately make children with low self-
esteem feel better about themselves? Perhaps not. Children with
low self-esteem are easily triggered to focus their attention on
themselves (Brockner & Hulton, 1978;Harter, 1993). In addition,
individuals with low self-esteem are quick to infer that others’
regard is conditional upon their achievements (Assor et al., 2004;
Baldwin & Sinclair, 1996), and they are afraid of losing others’
regard (Rudolph, Caldwell, & Conley, 2005). For example, they
often try to hide their weaknesses, avoid making mistakes, and
seek reassurance from others (Baumeister, Tice, & Hutton, 1989).
Person praise may magnify low self-esteem children’s self-focus
and feelings of conditional regard and thereby make them suscep-
tible to losing feelings of worth following failure. Thus, although
well-intended, person praise may ironically backfire following
failure, especially in children with low self-esteem.
Overview
We first examined whether adults are in fact inclined to give
children with low self-esteem more person praise than they give
other children (Study 1). Next, we examined whether person praise
causes children to feel ashamed following failure and whether this
effect is especially strong for children with low self-esteem (Study
2). We focused on shame because shame is a typical and aversive
response to failure, especially in late childhood (Harter, 2006).
Attribution theory holds that children feel ashamed when they
attribute failure to the self (e.g., “I’m no good”; Lewis, 1992).
When ashamed, children feel worthless, inferior, and exposed
(Tangney & Dearing, 2002)—the same feelings that adults want to
protect children with low self-esteem from by providing person
praise.
We studied children during late childhood for two reasons. First,
during this age period, children attach great importance to others’
opinions of their performance (Dweck, 2002), which makes praise
particularly salient for them. Second, children this age have ac-
quired the cognitive capacities to evaluate themselves from the
perspective of others and to make global negative self-evaluations
(Harter, 2006). These capacities contribute to the experience of
shame (Tangney & Dearing, 2002).
Study 1
Study 1 examined whether adults are inclined to give children
with low self-esteem more person praise, but not more process
praise, than they give children with high self-esteem. We studied
parents, who are in a position to praise children in daily life.
Method
Participants. Participants were 357 Dutch-speaking parents
(87% mothers) ages 29 – 66 (M!42.9, SD !6.2), recruited via
online advertisements. On average, participants had 2.1 children
(SD !0.8, range !1–5) and had received 10.4 years of education
(SD !3.5, range !1–30).
Procedure. Participants read six short descriptions of hypo-
thetical children ages 8 –13—three with high self-esteem (e.g.,
“Lisa usually likes the kind of person she is”) and three with low
self-esteem (e.g., “Sarah is often unhappy with herself”)— each
followed by a description of the child’s performance (e.g., “She
has just made a beautiful drawing”). Participants wrote down the
praise they would give.
All responses were classified by a trained coder (blind to self-
esteem) as either person praise (i.e., praise directed at the child’s
personal qualities, e.g., “You’re such a good drawer!”), process
praise (i.e., praise directed at the child’s behavior [i.e., actions,
strategies, or effort], e.g., “You did a good job drawing!”), other
praise (e.g., “Great!” or “Beautiful drawing!”), or no praise. Cod-
ing was consistent with previous research (Gunderson et al., in
press). Twenty percent of responses were also coded by the first
author (blind to self-esteem); agreement was high (Cohen’s "!
0.90). The frequency of each form of praise was summed, across
high and low self-esteem children separately.
Results and Discussion
The frequency of “no praise” did not differ between children
with high and low self-esteem, paired t(356) !1.11, p!.270.
Data were analyzed using a 2 (level of self-esteem: high, low) #
3 (type of praise: person, process, other) within-subject analysis of
variance (ANOVA). A significant interaction between level of
self-esteem and type of praise was found, F(2, 712) !39.54, p$
.001, %p
2!.10 (see Figure 1). As predicted, parents gave children
with low self-esteem more person praise than they gave children
with high self-esteem, paired t(356) !–9.33, p$.001, d!0.49.
In fact, parents gave children with low self-esteem more than twice
as much person praise (30%) as they gave children with high
self-esteem (14%). In contrast, parents gave children with high
self-esteem more process praise and “other” praise than they gave
children with low self-esteem, paired t(356) !3.87, p$.001, d!
0.21, and paired t(356) !4.40, p$.001, d!0.23, respectively.
These findings indicate that parents tend to attune their praise to
children’s level of self-esteem, giving children with low self-
esteem more person praise (but less other forms of praise) than
they give children with high self-esteem.
Study 2
Study 1 indicates that adults are inclined to give children with
low self-esteem more person praise than they give children with
high self-esteem. How, then, does person praise affect children
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10 BRUMMELMAN ET AL.

with low self-esteem? Study 2 examined this question experimen-
tally. We predicted that person praise, but not process praise,
would backfire in the face of failure, causing feelings of shame,
especially in children with low self-esteem.
Method
Participants. Participants were 313 children (54% girls, 90%
Caucasian) ages 8 –13 (M!10.4, SD !1.2). They were recruited
from five public elementary schools serving lower to upper
middleclass communities in the Netherlands. All participants re-
ceived active parental consent (parental consent rate !83%; child
assent rate !100%). They were randomly assigned to conditions
of a 3 (type of praise: person, process, none) #2 (performance
feedback: success, failure) between-subjects design (see Table 1
for descriptive statistics).
Procedure. Several days before the experiment, participants
completed a standard measure of self-esteem, the six-item Global
Self-Worth subscale of the Self-Perception Profile for Children
(Harter, 1985). Sample items are: “Some kids like the kind of
person they are” and “Some kids are happy with themselves as a
person.” Participants reported how much they were like these kids
(0 !I am not like these kids at all to 3 !I am exactly like these
kids). Responses were averaged across items (Cronbach’s &!
.73).
In the experiment proper, participants were tested in a quiet
room at their school. They were told that they would be performing
an online reaction time game called Go! against an opponent from
another school. Furthermore, they were told that the Go! webmas-
ter would be monitoring their performance via the Internet, which
highlighted public exposure—a key component of the experience
of shame (Thomaes, Stegge, Olthof, Bushman, & Nezlek, 2011).
Both the opponent and the webmaster were bogus, and the com-
puter controlled all events.
Participants first performed a noncompetitive practice round.
Then, they received a text message from the webmaster on their
screen, synchronized with a bogus webcam movie depicting the
webmaster, a same-sex adult, writing the message. In the person
praise condition, the webmaster wrote: “Wow, you’re great!” In
the process praise condition, the webmaster wrote: “Wow, you
did a great job!” In the no-praise condition, the webmaster
wrote nothing about participants’ performance. In all condi-
tions, the webmaster closed by writing: “The next round is
about to start.”
In the next round, participants competed against their opponent
and then received a message on their screen stating that they had
won (success condition: “[Participant’s name], you WON!”) or
lost (failure condition: “[Participant’s name], you LOST!”). Shame
was measured both before (Time 1 [T1]) and after (Time 2 [T2])
the game using five adjectives (ashamed, stupid, ridiculous, hu-
miliated, foolish;Thomaes et al., 2011). Participants reported how
they felt “right now, at the present time” concerning these adjec-
tives (0 !not at all to 4 !extremely). Responses were averaged
Figure 1. Frequency of person praise, process praise, and “other” praise given to children with high and low
self-esteem. Capped vertical bars denote 1 SE.
Table 1
Descriptive Statistics of Study 2 per Experimental Condition
Variable
Success Failure
Person praise Process praise No praise Person praise Process praise No praise
M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD
Age (years) 10.43 1.19 10.54 1.12 10.48 1.15 10.38 1.26 10.35 1.20 10.45 1.21
Self-esteem 2.30 0.51 2.39 0.47 2.37 0.43 2.35 0.48 2.35 0.57 2.46 0.43
Shame (T1) 0.60 0.70 0.41 0.44 0.51 0.61 0.51 0.51 0.54 0.56 0.35 0.45
Shame (T2) 0.17 0.29 0.23 0.32 0.33 0.37 0.77 0.77 0.55 0.50 0.43 0.58
Note. T1 !Time 1; T2 !Time 2.
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11
PRAISE, SELF-ESTEEM, AND SHAME

across adjectives (Cronbach’s &!.68 and .67 at T1 and T2,
respectively).
1
A thorough debriefing followed.
Results and Discussion
There were no differences between conditions in self-esteem, T1
shame, gender, or age (ps'.222), indicating successful random
assignment. Furthermore, neither gender nor age interacted with
either praise or performance feedback (ps'.170).
Overall effects of praise. Data were analyzed using a 3 (type
of praise: person, process, none) #2 (performance feedback:
success, failure) #2 (time: T1, T2) mixed-design ANOVA. A
significant interaction between performance feedback and time
was found, F(1, 305) !34.03, p$.001, %p
2!.10. Children
experienced increased shame following failure, F(1, 156) !6.46,
p!.012, d!0.21, and decreased shame following success, F(1,
153) !33.48, p$.001, d!0.50.
Importantly, a significant interaction between type of praise,
performance feedback, and time was found, F(2, 305) !5.92, p!
.003, %p
2!.04. As predicted, children experienced a sharp increase
in shame following failure after they received person praise, F(1,
54) !9.91, p!.003, d!0.46, but not after they received process
praise, F(1, 48) $1, p!.962, d!0.01, or no praise, F(1, 52) !
1.45, p!.235, d!0.16. Planned contrasts, with T1 shame as a
covariate, indicated that, following failure, T2 shame was higher in
the person praise condition than in both the process praise condi-
tion, F(1, 304) !8.47, p!.004, d!0.49, and the no praise
condition, F(1, 304) !10.12, p!.002, d!0.55, with no
difference between these latter two conditions, F(1, 304) !0.05,
p!.829, d!0.07. In contrast, children experienced decreased
shame following success regardless of whether they had received
person, process, or no praise, Fs'5.49, ps$.023, ds'0.35.
Together, these findings indicate that person praise, but not pro-
cess praise, caused children to feel ashamed following subsequent
failure.
Self-esteem modulating the effects of praise. We predicted
that the adverse effect of person praise would be especially strong
for children with low self-esteem. To test this hypothesis, we
conducted a hierarchical regression analysis with T2 shame as the
dependent variable. In Step 1, we entered T1 shame. In Step 2, we
entered type of praise (1 !person praise, 0 !otherwise), perfor-
mance feedback (1 !failure, 0 !success), and self-esteem
(continuous, centered). In Step 3, we entered two-way interactions.
In Step 4, we entered the three-way interaction.
As expected, the three-way interaction was significant, t(295) !
2.99, p!.003, (!.25. To interpret the interaction, simple slopes
were calculated for all six conditions with T1 shame as a covariate
(Holmbeck, 2002; see Figure 2, with self-esteem dichotomized
into 1 SD above and below the mean). As predicted, lower self-
esteem predicted increased T2 shame only in the person praise by
failure condition, t(295) !–3.88, p$.001, (!–.45. Self-esteem
was unrelated to T2 shame in all other conditions (ts$|–1.25|,
ps'.213). Thus, the shame-inducing effect of person praise in the
face of failure was especially strong for children with lower levels
of self-esteem.
General Discussion
It has been said that children are “fed with milk and praise”
(Lamb, 1823/1838, p. 292). Unfortunately, little is known about
how praise affects those who seem to need it the most— children
with low self-esteem. Study 1 showed that adults are inclined to
give children with low self-esteem more person praise, but less
process praise, than children with high self-esteem. Adults may
feel that children with low self-esteem will benefit from praise that
directly discredits or contradicts their insecurities. However, Study
2 showed that person praise backfires, especially in children with
low self-esteem, causing them to experience the aversive feeling of
shame in the face of failure. Note that baseline shame was con-
trolled for, taking into account that children with low self-esteem
routinely experience more shame than do others. These findings
suggest that adults, by giving person praise, may foster in children
with low self-esteem the very emotional vulnerability they are
trying to prevent.
Theoretical Implications
These findings suggest that person praise contributes to a self-
perpetuating downward spiral of self-derogation. Adults are in-
clined to give children with low self-esteem person praise. But
person praise may inadvertently put these children at risk to
experience decreased—rather than increased—feelings of worth.
Decreased feelings of self-worth, in turn, could invite more person
praise from adults, thereby perpetuating the downward spiral.
The adverse impact of person praise on children with low
self-esteem may have multiple origins. Person praise may trigger
these children’s feelings of conditional regard and, consequently,
make them feel unworthy following failure (Assor et al., 2004;
Kamins & Dweck, 1999). In addition, person praise may make
1
Because shameful situations can trigger aggression (Tangney & Dear-
ing, 2002), we also included a behavioral measure of aggression (i.e., a
version of the noise blast paradigm that we tried to adapt for children this
young). Fidelity checks indicated, however, that many children did not
understand that their opponent received noise blasts. Therefore, results for
this measure are not discussed further.
Figure 2. Time 2 shame (adjusted for Time 1 shame) at high (M)1SD)
and low (M–1SD) levels of self-esteem, depicted per experimental
condition.
!
p$.001. No other slope was significant (ps'.213).
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12 BRUMMELMAN ET AL.

children with low self-esteem highly self-focused, thereby induc-
ing them to attribute subsequent failure to the self (Lewis, 1992).
To disentangle these processes, future research can test whether
the adverse impact of person praise can be prevented by phrasing
such praise as unconditional (e.g., “You’re great, no matter what”;
Baldwin & Sinclair, 1996) or by redirecting children’s attention
away from the self and onto the task after they have been praised
(Brockner & Hulton, 1978).
This research contributes to previous research in important
ways. It is the first to suggest that common sense can lead adults
astray in their attempts to help children with low self-esteem feel
better about themselves. Furthermore, this research shows that
adults attune their praise to children’s traits. Previous research has
primarily focused on the consequences, rather than the anteced-
ents, of adults’ praise (Henderlong & Lepper, 2002). Additionally,
this research adds to the growing body of research indicating that
seemingly minor differences in socializing messages can have
considerable impact on children’s conceptions of themselves and
the world around them (Cimpian, 2013).
Practical Implications
The finding that person praise has adverse effects in children
with low self-esteem has important practical implications. Preven-
tion and intervention programs, educational programs, and parent
training programs often rely on praise to raise children’s low
self-esteem (e.g., Hattie & Timperley, 2007;O’Mara, Marsh,
Craven, & Debus, 2006). To be sure, our results do not imply that
adults should refrain from praising children altogether. In fact,
research has suggested that process praise often does benefit
children’s academic motivation (Henderlong & Lepper, 2002). For
example, praise for effort may help children persist in the face of
academic failure (Mueller & Dweck, 1998). Furthermore, within
caring family or classroom contexts, adequate forms of praise may
communicate to children that they are loved and cared about,
which is key to their psychological adjustment (Rohner, 2004).
Our results do imply, however, that adults must be careful using
person praise in performance contexts, especially with children
with low self-esteem.
Limitations and Future Research
Our research is not without limitations. First, the studies were
conducted in Western samples. Western society is generally more
concerned than non-Western society with building children’s self-
esteem (Heine, Lehman, Markus, & Kitayama, 1999), which sug-
gests that non-Western adults might be less inclined to give chil-
dren with low self-esteem person praise. Second, the studies were
conducted in controlled settings. Future research is needed to
establish to what extent our findings generalize to naturalistic
settings (e.g., teacher– child interactions in the classroom).
Conclusion
Western society has a strong belief in the power of praise—
especially for supporting children with low self-esteem (e.g., Tal-
bot, 2009;Youngs, 1991). The present research indicates that
adults are inclined to give children with low self-esteem person
praise but that such praise ironically backfires. Thus, much like
penicillin, person praise can have adverse side effects and must not
be administered haphazardly.
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PRAISE, SELF-ESTEEM, AND SHAME

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Received March 29, 2012
Revision received November 29, 2012
Accepted January 16, 2013 !
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