Compliments Are More Influential Than We Think

Social psychologists amit cumar and nicholas epsley ask participants to write gratitude letters to notable people in their lives. Letters were packed with compliments about how the person positively impacted the sender's life. The researchers then contacted those who did receive the letters and asked how they actually felt. Turned out, the recipients felt a lot better about receiving the letters than the senders had estimated. And that's because we have more influence than we think. These studies also show that we have a low opinion of ourselves and we underestimate our influence.