Kind words do not become tired words: Undervaluing the positive impact of frequent compliments

Compliments can satisfy others' need to belong, but expressers may underestimate their positive impact on recipients, creating a barrier to giving them more often. We assess how people expect recipients will react to multiple compliments over time, compared to recipients' actual experiences. Participants expected that recipients would adopt to multiple compliments, with each feeling less positive and sincere (Experiment 1). An experiment found no evidence of adaptation in recipients' actual experience, while expressers underestimated recipients' positive reactions (Experiment 2). Participants expected less adaptation among recipients when they saw the actual compliments received, suggesting that mistaken adaptation beliefs stem from overestimating similarity between multiple compliments (Experiment 3). Underestimating compliments' consistently positive impact may restrain people from expressing them more routinely.