praise

We know that flattery, a form of social reward, is a powerful tool. In Flattery Will Get You Somewhere, we saw that complimenting an individual made them feel more positively about the person bestowing the favorable comments, even when they…

Here's another rare foray into neuro-parenting. In How to Praise Your Child, I described research that showed telling your child he/she is smart could actually backfire and have negative effects on performance. It turns out there's…

I don't often get into neuro-parenting here, but I thought this particular research finding was interesting enough to single out. (I mentioned it in my Managing by Mistakes post last week, too.) The short story is that a lot of what…