“You did incredibly well!”: teachers’ inflated praise can make children from low-SES backgrounds seem less smart (but more hardworking)

This study investigates whether teachers' inflated praise disproportionately affects children from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. Two preregistered experiments were conducted, one with teachers and another with children. The teacher experiment showed that teachers attributed success of low-SES children more to hard work and gave them more inflated praise than high-SES children. The children's experiment revealed that children perceived students receiving inflated praise as less smart but more hardworking compared to those receiving modest praise. The findings suggest that well-intentioned inflated praise can reinforce negative stereotypes about low-SES children's abilities.

Emiel Schoneveld, Eddie Brummelman