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Is Praise an Effective Tool for Reducing Child Externalizing Behavior? A Longitudinal Experiment

Thu, March 21, 4:00 to 5:30pm, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 3, Room 339

Integrative Statement

Background: Our society believes strongly in the power of parental praise. Parents are often encouraged to praise children’s positive behaviors so as to reduce their negative behaviors. In fact, praise is a key component of well-established Behavioral Parent Training programs targeting children’s externalizing behavior (e.g., defiant and oppositional behavior), such as Triple P and The Incredible Years. Does parental praise actually reduce children’s externalizing behaviors? There are opposing theoretical perspectives. A perspective based on operant conditioning holds that praise directly reinforces children’s compliant and positive behavior, thus reducing their externalizing behavior (e.g., Leijten et al., 2016; Mash, & Johnston, 1982). Moreover, from an attachment perspective, praise may indirectly affect behavior through positive parent-child interactions (e.g., Rothbaum & Weisz, 1994). Another perspective, based on the self-determination theory, holds that praise might be experienced as controlling, leading children to rebel through externalizing behavior and undermining children’s intrinsic motivation (e.g., Brummelman et al., 2014; Kohn, 1993; Lee et al., 2017). We conducted a longitudinal experiment (3 time-points) to examine: (1) how naturalistic parental praise relates to children’s externalizing behavior, both between families and within families; (2) whether increasing parental praise through a randomized intervention affects children’s externalizing behavior.

Methods: Participants were 387 families of children between 4 and 8 years (Mage = 6.31, SD = 1.33; 55.30% boys) at risk for externalizing behavior problems. During three waves, (1) parental praise and child externalizing behaviors were observed during three 5-minute interactions and coded using the Dyadic Parent–child Interaction Coding System; and (2) parents reported on their child’s externalizing behavior using the Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory. Between wave 1 and 2, families were randomly assigned to a behavioral parenting training program (which sought to increase parental praise) or a control group.

Results: First, we examined between- and within-family relations between observed parental praise and child externalizing behavior at baseline using multi-level analyses with random effects. On the between-family level, there was a small negative association: Children who received more frequent praise from their parents displayed less externalizing behavior. Yet, on the within-family level, there was a small positive association: When children received more frequent praise, they displayed more externalizing behavior. However, the direction and strength of this relation also significantly differed between families. Second, latent growth curves were used to assess the change in praise and child externalizing over time (wave 1-3). Although behavioral parent training indeed increased parents’ use of praise (compared to control group: Cohen’s d = .84), this increase was not related to the small decrease in externalizing child behavior. Moreover, path analyses with direct and indirect effects in Mplus showed that parental praise did not mediate the effects of behavioral parent training on child externalizing behavior.

Discussion: We found no evidence that parental praise reduces children’s externalizing behaviors. Importantly, we discovered that the effects of praise may differ significantly between families. Future research should examine for whom, when and why praise is beneficial. In sum, praise might not be the universal wonder cure we think it is.

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