A shared universe › Blog › Saying something kind to someone · Español
To give a good compliment, all it takes is to say something specific and sincere, expecting nothing in return, and the person who receives it is more pleased than you imagine. Studies show we tend to underestimate how much a compliment pleases and overestimate how awkward it will be. You like the way someone has spoken, how well something suits them, what they have done for another person. You think it and do not say it. It seems odd to you, or you fear it will sound false.
The psychologists Erica Boothby and Vanessa Bohns ran five studies in which some people paid another person a compliment, after guessing how it would go down. Then they asked the person who had received it. Those giving the compliment got their sums wrong: they thought the other person would be less pleased and feel more uncomfortable than actually happened.
The mistake had consequences. According to their work, published in 2021 in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, the less someone believed their compliment would please, the less they felt like giving it. And the estimate stayed pessimistic even when people looked back on the moment afterwards. Those who went ahead, incidentally, felt better afterwards, even if they had felt awkward beforehand.
According to the authors, the person about to say it is focused on themselves: on whether it will come out right, on whether it will seem strange. That unease, and doubt about whether they will say it well, is what leads them astray. In the studies, people watching the scene from outside, without those nerves, did correctly guess how the other person would feel.
The person receiving it does not notice whether the sentence came out perfectly. They only hear that someone has noticed something good about them.
It is not something that only happens with compliments. In 2018, the researchers Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley asked a number of people to write a thank-you letter and to guess how the recipient would feel. In their experiments, the writers fell short in estimating the other person’s surprise and joy, and overestimated how awkward they would feel. If you would like to try it, how to write a gratitude letter has ideas to get you started.
Both pieces of research point to the same thing: the kind gesture we keep to ourselves would nearly always have been well received.
You do not need to be eloquent. What reaches people most is usually simple:
A compliment to a stranger counts too: to the waiter who served you patiently, to the person who gave up their seat. Why those words from someone you do not know carry so much weight is in the kindness of a stranger.
A compliment is meant to make the other person feel good, not to make yourself look good. That is why some remarks, well meant as they are, do not land as hoped:
Receiving a compliment is hard too. The simplest thing is not to play it down and to say “thank you”. Turning it down leaves the other person with their hands held out.
If your instinct is to brush it off (“oh, it was nothing”), try keeping just the “thank you” and a smile. For the person who said it, your accepting it is part of the gift.
The words left in A shared universe are just that: something good said to someone, expecting nothing. When you keep a star company with a few words from a list, the person who lit it sees how many times it has been kept company and what has been said, though never by whom.
And if someone once said something kind to you that you still remember, you can light a star with “What I’m grateful for” to tell it.