An experiment done on a group of men in North Carolina shows how helpless we can be in the face of praise. The men received comments about themselves from another person who needed a favor from them. Some of the men got only positive comments, some got only negative comments, and some got a mixture of good and bad. There were three interesting findings. First, the evaluator who provided only praise was liked best. Second, this tendency held true even when the men fully realized that the flatterer stood to gain from their liking of him. Finally, unlike the other types of comments, pure praise
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