New perspectives on the praise literature: towards a conceptual model of compliment

Compliments are verbal acts that take place on daily basis between at least two individuals (the complimenter and the complimentee). The frequency and effects of compliments contrast with the scarcity of research devoted to this issue. So far, compliments have mainly been studied through the lens of educational psychology, with the aim of examining their effects on students' learning and performance. These studies concluded that compliments are relatively ineffective educational tools. For their part, the linguists were interested in the wording of compliments and the cross-cultural issues. Our literature review aims to enlarge the focus of research in this domain by considering the compliment from other perspectives, such as social psychology, personality, emotions, social cognition and communication. This article aims to provide a theoretical framework that (1) integrates the disparate elements of the literature on compliments, (2) accounts for the antecedents and consequences of the compliment, as well as the moderating effect of contextual and personal variables (in the complimenter and the complementee), (3) explains why compliments do not always have the desired effect and why well-intended compliments can have negative consequences on the receiver, and (4) stimulates future research by identifying gaps in the literature and suggesting a number of hypotheses.