Food, flattery, and friendship

The Negative Effects of Praise and Flattery

An experiment examines the claims that players are (1) susceptible to flattery and praise from a video game, (2) that the effects are similar to flattery and praise from humans and (3) that flattery and praise can impair a player's performance. In two playsessions participants (N = 42) were asked to play a casual video game. Half of the participants were only exposed to the original game sounds...

Flattery and Persuasion: A Dual Attitudes Perspective

EXTENDED ABSTRACT Several studies have shown that the target of flattery evaluates the flatterer positively, because people have a basic desire to believe good things about themselves (e.g., Vonk 2002). Recent research, however, suggests a caveat. Namely, when people are aware of an ulterior motive (e.g., the consumer who suspects that a salesperson is offering a compliment just to close the sa...

Imitation, The Greatest Form of Flattery?

Unilateral Friendship Outcomes and Preschool Friendship Formation

Unilateral friendships provide a powerful mechanism to study friendship formation, because these friendships contain interest in friendship, but have not yet become full, reciprocated friendship. This longitudinal study investigated whether the conversations of unilateral dyads identified in the fall were predictive of that dyad’s relationship status in the winter. I hypothesized that the conve...

Observing Flattery: A Social Comparison Perspective

This research investigates how observers react when they see someone else being given a compliment that is flattering but that appears sincere. Prior work suggests that to the extent the compliment is perceived to be genuine, observers will not judge the source negatively. Merging insights from social comparison research and dual attitudes theory, this article presents a novel conceptualization...