To the best of our knowledge, this finding has not been reported by other studies. This suggests that future research on the effects of person praise on students’ motivation and performance must consider the manner of feedback employed. More importantly, given the influence of the feedback environment, what are the effects of person praise when different manners of feedback are employed? Person praise has been suggested to have either positive or negative effects on students’ motivation and performance, operating through different psychological mechanisms (Henderlong & Lepper, 2002; Zhang et al., 2020). On one hand, person praise has been reported to improve students’ state self-esteem and make students feel more positively about themselves (Blumenfeld et al., 1982; Escobar-Soler et al., 2024; Felson & Zielinski, 1989; Henderlong & Lepper, 2002; Li et al., 2020; Ye et al., 2023). According to self-affirmation theory, attribute affirmation is an intervention designed to validate an individual’s positive self-qualities.
Praise Should Emphasize Process, Not Ability
All but one PPR study was published before 2014, when the peer praise literature turned all but exclusively to investigating tootling interventions. Following classic paradigms in achievement goal theory (e.g., Ames, 1992; Butler, 1988), we operationalized feedback manner not through the content of a specific message, but through the anticipated evaluative context, which signaled the purpose of the assessment to students. We informed all participants that internationally renowned scientific researchers had discovered that high school students’ performance in a task named the high-difficulty subtle difference detection task was a good indicator of the intelligence of these students. In this task, a student was asked to identify differences between two highly similar pictures. Performance in this task accurately reflected many crucial abilities, including observation, concentration, persistence, agile thinking, and intelligence. For the task-involving feedback, we informed the students that their test would be marked by a teacher after completion.
The Power Of Praise In Educational Settings
- The power of praise creates ripple effects in every relationship we encounter—personal or professional.
- Praise is something virtually every church does to open their services—yet, when was the last time you heard a series of sermons on praise?
- That’s why it’s crucial to understand the difference between effective and ineffective praise and how to apply them as an early childhood educator.
- Helping students identify, express, and manage emotions through positive praise equips them with essential life skills to develop in and outside the classroom.
On the basis of the literature review mentioned above, we proposed that person praise may have different effects on students’ motivation and performance when different manners of feedback are employed. Specifically, when task-involving feedback is provided, the learning environment fosters a mastery-goal orientation, leading students to focus on learning gains and self-improvement rather than competition. This context inherently establishes a less anxious and low-threat learning environment (Butler, 1987, 1988; Butler & Nisan, 1986; Hogue, 2024; Pekrun et al., 2014).
Participants
Based on the response of each student, we would provide comments that could improve their relevant abilities. For the ego-involving feedback, we informed the students that their test would be marked by a teacher after completion, and a list detailing the scores and ranking of each student in their class would be provided. This enabled each student to understand their performance compared with that of their classmates.
In the present study, person praise (i.e., praising students’ positive traits like intelligence or personality) is argued to function as a form of attribute affirmation. This is justified by our pre-task operationalization, which validates the student’s global self-worth, thereby serving the same core psychological function as a traditional self-affirmation activity in mitigating potential self-integrity threats. Conversely, other researchers reported that when students are given person praise and feel more positively about themselves, the affirmation activates their core self-worth.
Second, the indicators of participation motivation and performance in our study were the number of attempted questions and total score, respectively. We recommend that in future research, more extensive and diverse indicators could be used to examine the consistency of our results. Third, a limitation of this study stems from the specific operationalization of praise and feedback. Our design focused on the interaction between pre-task person praise and the anticipated feedback structure, distinguishing it from most research that examines post-task praise and feedback content. Consequently, our findings are applicable Is There an Asiavibe App only to the effects of pre-task affirmation combined with feedback expectations, and should not be extrapolated to the influence of praise or feedback content given after task completion. Finally, our sample consisted of Asian junior high school students from Taiwan.