Arthur Brooks, writing for The Atlantic, says that compliments are an important part of how we communicate with each other. They’re a big part of the positive remarks that boost the self-esteem of the receiver and keep work and personal relationships warm and productive. Relationship experts gauge the future success of couples by the ratio of positive to negative remarks, so compliments matter.
But for a compliment to be received well, the receiver has to believe it’s real. Brooks writes, “Whether the compliment is effective in uplifting the other person depends on whether it is believable, appropriate, and unqualified. To begin with, a good compliment must not clash with its recipient’s self-conception.” That means your recipient must already believe in some way, that you’re telling them the truth. They know, or at least believe, that the new dress is flattering. That they worked hard on the report. That they look so much better since they recovered from the flu. That marriage agrees with them.
If they don’t believe in those things, they will doubt, even reject, the compliment. Sometimes this is modesty, but most often pushback on a compliment is a sign that the comment does not align with the receiver’s self-image. It’s hard for many people to accept a compliment, but there are ways to make compliments matter more and be received well. Here’s Arthur Brooks’ advice.
He writes, “A compliment must meet three criteria to be accepted by its object. The praise must come from a person with credibility to give it, it must be sincere and unscripted, and it must occur in the appropriate context.”
We don’t trust a retail salesperson to tell us that that dress is stunning on us – they have financial motives. We also don’t trust our five-year-old granddaughter – she loves everything that’s pink and makes you look like a princess. Over the years, our partners lose the ability to help us accept compliments; they may have been insincere or willing to stretch the truth in the past. Or we might think that they’re looking through the lens of love and not seeing us clearly. That’s how strangers come to have more authority over how we look than the ones closest to us.
Speaking of critical family and miserable bosses, some charmers have mastered the backhanded compliment. This is vitriol disguised as praise, and it’s destructive, unproductive, and cruel. Brooks writes, “Negative praise include[s] comparisons with past failure (“This draft is certainly better than the last one”), with poor expectations (“Your work is better than I expected”), and with a derogatory stereotype (“This work isn’t bad for a Yale grad”). In their experiments, the authors found that the complimenters thought these backhanded comparisons were positive, but both recipients and third-party observers disagreed.”
Brooks says true and meaningful compliments have these traits in common.
- They are true, and the giver is sincere in telling you what they think. We can all smell fake flattery.
- They are given as gifts, with no expectation of reciprocation or favor. It takes practice, but being able to receive a compliment from a stranger or new connection with a simple “Thanks – you’re so kind to say so” positions you as gracious, polite, and also powerful.
- They are not qualified by anything. Compliments that compare you to a standard (“You look great for your age” or “You are really good at that for a girl”) do more harm than good.
One last piece of wisdom from Arthur Brooks: most compliments (in studies, 80%) are about appearance or performance. He’d like to see more people compliment others on what the psychologist Rhett Diessner calls “moral beauty,” a characteristic that is reflected in “acts of charity, kindness, compassion, forgiveness, courage, or self-sacrifice.”
In other words, look for people doing what is right, and praise them for it. It’s one way to get more of that into the world, and help others see it and show gratitude for it.
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