On a recent weekday afternoon, Xuan Zhao popped into the post office shortly before it closed. The man helping her was incredibly patient and went out of his way to assist her with a pile of packages. So before she left, she handed him a compliment card she had designed. “Your willingness to go the extra mile never goes unnoticed,” it said on the front. The flip-side read: “You’re receiving this compliment because your awesomeness deserves a big shoutout,” along with a reminder that kind words have the power to brighten other people’s day more than we might expect, and a suggestion to pay it forward. “He had such a big smile on his face,” she recalls.
Zhao, a behavioral scientist at Stanford University who’s the CEO and co-founder of the well-being start-up Flourish Science, has spearheaded research that suggests we tend to underestimate the positive impact compliments have on both ourselves and the receiver. As a result, we don’t give as many as we should. “The compliment is one of these really powerful, small actions that brighten your day and brighten someone else’s day,” she says. “And it costs nothing.”
Why is a compliment so impactful? One of the most important things to humans is to feel valued and respected by others, and like we belong, says Vanessa Bohns, a social psychologist and professor of organizational behavior at Cornell University, who has researched compliments. “We’re always attuned to any scraps of information we get about how we’re viewed by other people,” she says, but rarely do we receive any. “When we get a compliment, it gives us that feedback we want to know so badly about what other people think of us.” An expression of admiration provides a “sliver of hope” that we’re viewed positively in some attribute, she adds, like work or fashion—which activates the reward center of the brain and bolsters our spirits. According to Bohns’ research, people feel “significantly better” after both…
Read the full article here
