Encouragement Vs. Praise

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Caption: Encouragement on the Mountain

Encouragement Vs. Praise

In the counseling session, encouragement can be a useful tool for a counselor who has formed a trusting and professional therapeutic relationship. However, this is a skill that must be used appropriately. Many times, encouragement can get confused with praise. This post will look to identify the differences between the two so that an aspiring counselor may have a better understanding on how to utilize encouragement themselves.

Praise is normally an action that we are familiar with in a social context. It is used to show high approval of someone’s actions. However, while praise seems like a good gesture, underlying, it is passing judgment on the individual. For this reason, it has many disadvantages to being used in the counseling setting. Praise is a reinforcer. This means that an individual’s behavior is concerned with whether or not they will receive praise for their actions or change in behavior. If praise is removed the individual will feel like a failure and not good enough. This teaches the individual to be afraid of failure. We can see how this can be dangerous to the therapeutic relationship and the counseling outcomes as a whole. One goal of all counseling is that clients gain a sense of autonomy, and that they can take away things from the counseling session that they themselves can apply to their life. When praise is expected, clients lose their autonomy and their actions may be determined by external factors instead of internal ones (Pitsounis & Dixon, 1988).

            Encouragement on the other hand offers the opposite of praise. Where praise may lead to fear of failure, encouragement can instill to courage. Encouragement promotes confidence and self-sufficiency (Pitsounis & Dixon, 1988).  An interesting fact is that encouragement was thought to have been developed by Alfred Adler, who believed that it was crucial to human development and social interest. Instead of modifying behavior, like praise as a reinforcer, encouragement motivates the client to make their own healthy choices. Four dimensions of encouragement that are beneficial to counseling are a positive view of oneself, positive view of others, being open to experiences, and having a sense of belonging to others (Wong, 2014).

Types of encouraging responses might highlight an individual’s efforts towards improvement, strengths, present capacities, and competency (Young, 2017). As a counselor, these differences between encouragement and praise will be important facts to remember when utilizing this change technique.

References:

Pitsounis, N. D., & Dixon, P. N. (1988). Encouragement versus praise: Suggestions for improving productivity of the mentally retarded. Individual Psychology, 44(4), 507-512.

Young, M. E. (2017). Learning the art of helping: Building blocks and techniques. Boston, MA: Pearson Education.

Wong, J. Y. (2014). The psychology of encouragement. The Counseling Psychologist, 43(2), 178-216.