Why don’t people give enough compliments? Underestimating the positive impact of compliments

Compliments benefit the emotional well-being for both expressers and recipients, yet people report giving and receiving fewer compliments than they would like. Seven experiments investigate an egocentric bias that may keep people from expressing genuine compliments to others: underestimating the positive impact of compliments on recipients. In three experiments, participants wrote compliments and then predicted how happy and awkward recipients...