Who doesn’t like when someone praises their way of handling a tense situation at work, their choice of attire, or their presentation skills? Indeed, when asked, nearly 90% of people believe that they should compliment each other more often. Yet, consistently, receiving a compliment brightens people’s day much more than anticipated, leaving them feeling better, and less uncomfortable, than givers expect.įrom the outside, it seems obvious that receiving a compliment would make someone feel better. Compliment-givers tend to believe the other person won’t enjoy their interaction as much as they actually do in fact, they often believe that their exchange will probably make the person a little uncomfortable. Using the same basic experimental paradigm both with friends and strangers, we consistently found that people underestimated how good their compliment would make the recipient feel. We then asked those same participants to actually compliment another person, and we compared how that person actually felt after receiving the compliment to how participants imagined that person would feel. In two independently conducted lines of research, we asked participants to estimate how another person would feel after receiving a compliment. As Alan Mulally, former CEO of Ford, has been quoted as saying of his employees, “It’s all about appreciating them, respecting them and thanking them at every step of the way.” While the importance of expressing praise and gratitude for establishing a positive organizational culture is clear, our research suggests that people may not follow Mulally’s advice because they underestimate the positive impact of kind words on others. Neuroscientists have even shown that the brain processes verbal affirmations similarly to financial rewards. Gratitude makes people feel valued, and positive feedback has been shown to mitigate the negative effects of stress on employee performance. Expressing praise and gratitude is particularly important for keeping up morale. Establishing a positive organizational culture, one in which employees and managers support one another, should be a top priority for organizations.
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