The Psychology of Encouragement: Theory, Research, and Applications

Despite the frequent use of encouragement in everyday social life, encouragement remains an understudied topic in positive psychology and counseling psychology. To address this gap, this article resolves ambiguity in terminology and synthesizes diverse streams of theorizing and research to propose an integrative psychological science of encouragement. The author offers a definition of encouragement, delineates its conceptual boundaries, and proposes a conceptual model that provides a taxonomy of encouragement processes. Known as the Tripartite Encouragement Model (TEM), this model charts the foci, features, and levels of encouragement. Encouragement is conceptualized, at different levels, as an act of interpersonal communication, a character strength, as well as an ecological group norm. The author explains how encouragement can enhance the quality of counseling practice as well as practical applications in other areas of psychology. Finally, the author delineates how the TEM can guide future research on the psychology of encouragement.