A recent study suggests that children with low self-esteem may get hurt by too much praises and compliments.
"Inflated praise can backfire with those kids who seem to need it the most - kids with low self-esteem," lead researcher Eddie Brummelman said in a news release.
The study researchers found that parents are twice more likely to give inflated praise to children with low self-esteem than to those with higher self-esteem.
"Parents seemed to think that the children with low self-esteem needed to get extra praise to make them feel better," co-author Brad Bushman said. "It's understandable why adults would do that, but we found in another experiment that this inflated praise can backfire in these children," he added.
For the study, the researchers told the participating children to draw either difficult or simple pictures. Low self-esteem children drew simpler pictures after they got inflated praise form the adults.
The researchers stated that inflated praise included compliments such as "incredibly" or adjective like "perfect."
The authors also found that high-esteem children were found to choose difficult pictures if given inflated praise.
According to the researchers children with low self-esteem felt pressurised after receiving inflated praise. "If you tell a child with low self-esteem that they did incredibly well, they may think they always need to do incredibly well. They may worry about meeting those high standards and decide not to take on any new challenges," said Brummelman.
The researchers advised the parents and the adults not to give inflated praise to the children with low self-esteem. "It goes against what many people may believe would be most helpful," Bushman added. "But it really isn't helpful to give inflated praise to children who already feel bad about themselves."
The study was published in the journal Psychological Science.
