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Inflated praise can reinforce stereotypes

13 March 2025

Interview Learning & Education Development Society Teaching methods Education systems Equity Individual differences Learning environments Mental health Psychology

However well-intentioned, it can send the wrong message

Photo by Pressmaster from shutterstock.com

Interviewee:

Eddie Brummelman

Associate Professor, University of Amsterdam

Interview by:

Annie Brookman-Byrne

Deputy Editor BOLD

Partner

npj Science of Learning

npj Science of Learning is a fully open-access journal that aims to provide a forum for research at the intersection of neuroscience, psychology, and education theory. It publishes high-quality research on all aspects of learning and memory – from the genetic, cellular and molecular basis, to understanding how children and adults learn through experience and formal education practice. npj Science of Learning is pleased to host a Collection uniting the social and behavioural sciences to address achievement inequality.

Eddie Brummelman was a first-generation student, meaning he was the first in his immediate family to attend university. His parents taught him that people can achieve anything they want if they work hard enough, just like The Little Engine That Could. However, he came to realize that this platitude isn’t actually true, and that educational settings create unfair disadvantages for some children. Eddie tells Annie Brookman-Byrne about how this realization motivated his research on children’s self-views and praise.

Annie Brookman-Byrne: What are you trying to understand about inequality in education?

Eddie Brummelman: I was brought up to believe that we can all achieve anything with hard work. As a student, however, I realized that this belief is false, and that children from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds are often disadvantaged in educational settings. My research seeks to understand why.

“Children from low socioeconomic status backgrounds are often disadvantaged in educational settings.”

Ultimately, this is a question of unfulfilled potential. My lab, KiDLAB, and I want to understand why some exceptionally talented children do not perform well in school, and what we as developmental scientists can do to help all children fulfill their potential. One focus of our work is to find out how praise affects children’s motivation, self-esteem, and achievement. 

ABB: How can praise contribute to inequality, and what have you learned from your recent research on the praise children receive from teachers?

EB: Imagine you and your friend both got a B+ on a test, and the teacher lavishes inflated praise on you—but not your friend: “Terrific! What an amazing achievement!” How would you feel?

Teachers want to combat inequalities in their classroom. Despite their good intentions, however, they sometimes inadvertently reinforce existing inequalities by doling out inflated praise. Instead of telling children that they have done a good job, teachers may say that they have done an amazing job. Rather than simply saying that a task was well done, teachers may tell children that they did incredibly well.

Since teachers, like most people, appreciate effort, we suspected that teachers would give more inflated praise to children from low- than high-SES backgrounds. Children from low-SES backgrounds are stereotyped as being less academically able than their peers, and thus teachers may be inclined to attribute these students’ success to hard work rather than to ability, and to offer excessive praise.

However well-intentioned it may be, inflated praise can suggest to children that their success is due to extraordinary effort—and not so much to extraordinary ability. My former student Emiel Schoneveld and I set out to test these ideas in two preregistered experiments, as part of his Master’s thesis project.

In our first experiment, involving 106 primary school teachers, we found that teachers tend to attribute the success of children from a low-SES background more to hard work, and to deliver more inflated praise such as “You did incredibly well!”

Our second experiment involved 64 primary school children aged 10-13. Children learned that a classmate had received inflated praise while a child who had performed just as well had received modest praise or none at all. We found that children perceived the child who was praised more lavishly to be more hardworking but less smart.

ABB: What can teachers learn from your findings?

EB: Our results show that teachers’ inflated praise, although well-intentioned, can cause children from low-SES backgrounds to be perceived as less smart, thereby reinforcing negative stereotypes about these children’s academic abilities. Good intentions can sometimes lead teachers astray.

“Teachers’ inflated praise, although well-intentioned, can cause children from low-SES backgrounds to be perceived as less smart.”

At least in Western countries, teachers tend to believe that lavishing children with praise will boost their self-esteem and increase their motivation. But it can actually make children seem less smart in the eyes of their classmates. Children are sensitive to minor variations in teachers’ wording—even a single word, like “incredibly,” can have the effect of devaluing a child’s ability.

ABB: Has studying praise changed anything in your own life?

EB: It has changed the way I respond to children’s achievements. The education scholar Alfie Kohn once wrote that “the most notable feature of a positive judgment isn’t that it’s positive, but that it’s a judgment.” When children show me their drawings or other achievements, I share their joy and express interest in their work. This tells them that I care about them and what they have accomplished, without judging them or their work. This can be especially important for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, who may worry that I will perceive them to be less capable than other children.