Think about the last time you expressed praise. For me this is easy. As a parent of young children, I do it multiple times a day. \u2018How kind you are, sharing your teddy!\u2019 \u2018Aw, it sounds like you were a really supportive friend today, that\u2019s lovely\u2019… etc. I\u2019m also really lucky to have awesome colleagues, lovely friends and family, so there too: \u2018what a fantastic initiative!\u2019, \u2018thank you, that\u2019s so thoughtful \u2026\u2019<\/p>\n
Do you praise often? Does it feel like a morally fraught endeavour? Or do you give it little thought?<\/p>\n
In all honesty, I spent a lot of time (most of my life!) doling out praise without thinking too much about it. After all, as a positive appraisal, a laudatory expression, it doesn\u2019t seem like much could go wrong with praise. Expressing praise is something that is often encouraged: for example in parenting interventions like the incredible years program, there is emphasis on praise, reward and celebration. Employers often have \u2018reward and recognition\u2019 schemes as a way of praising valued contributions in the workplace. Praise seems like a positive phenomenon. And, I think, that is an assumption shared by many philosophers too.<\/p>\n
In philosophical works, \u2018praise and blame\u2019 are often found on the same page, but typically, authors then go on to focus mainly on blame. Either it is assumed that praise is the positive counterpart of blame, so a symmetrical analysis will apply (McGeer 2019, Vargas 2013). Or, it is assumed that praise needs little justification, since people can\u2019t really be harmed by praise (see e.g. Watson 1996, Nelkin 2011; contrast Stout 2020). Getting blame wrong is a real concern – you unfairly condemn or undeservedly sanction others. But since praise is a positive affair, who really cares if we sometimes get it wrong?<\/p>\n
There is *something* to this thought: misplaced blame is almost always cause for concern, correction, and apology, whereas misplaced praise need not be. But that praise might not harm doesn\u2019t mean it never does.<\/p>\n
In fact, once we focus on praise, we can think of many ways in which praise might go wrong: it could be condescending, patronising, belittling (see Jeppsson and Brandenburg 2020); it can be used in ways that are manipulative, obsequious; praise can be gushing, or false flattery. In many of these cases, people might intend to use praise in harmful ways. I\u2019m particularly interested in cases where praise might be harmful, even though it is intended to be a genuine positive appraisal.<\/p>\n
The literature on microaggressions contains examples of how, even when intended as an expression of genuine positive appraisal, praise might sometimes be deeply problematic. One of the Black participants in Sue et al\u2019s (2008) study reported being praised for being articulate: \u201c\u201cYou know, \u2018You articulate so well.\u2019 Shouldn\u2019t that be something you expect all your applicants to do? I have a bachelor\u2019s degree. Do you think I didn\u2019t pass seventh grade English?\u201d<\/p>\n
Next consider Aubrey Gordon\u2019s description of how anti-fat bias might be conveyed in praise:<\/p>\n
\u2018\u201cYou\u2019re so brave to wear that. I wish I had your confidence.\u201d \u2026I smiled and thanked her for the compliment, but I couldn\u2019t figure out what she meant. \u2026 What had been so \u201cbrave\u201d about wearing such a thoroughly unremarkable, standard dress?
\n\u2026I was only brave if my body was meant to be a source of shame, something to be shut away, covered up, rarely seen and never discussed.\u2019<\/p>\n
Both Sue\u2019s participant, and Aubrey Gordon, point to the fact that praise is keyed to certain expectations. In general, we praise people when they exceed expectations – or when meeting them is challenging, perhaps. But in these cases, the expectations in relation to which praise is expressed are deeply problematic: they are informed by the racism of low expectations; or they encode anti-fat assumptions about the shame fat people are presumed to feel, and to have to \u2018overcome\u2019.<\/p>\n
These two cases illustrate how praise – even when well-intended – might be oppressive. In their analysis of \u2018oppressive things\u2019, Liao and Huebner (2020) focus on the ways in which things might be causally embedded in oppressive structures: caused by, and in turn causing, oppression. We might say that oppressive praise is normatively embedded in oppressive structures: informed by, and in turn further informing, oppressive normative standards. The kind of oppression at stake can be thought of as what Iris Marion Young called \u2018cultural imperialism\u2019, whereby \u2018the dominant meanings of a society render the particular perspective of one\u2019s own group invisible at the same time as they stereotype one\u2019s group and mark it out as the Other\u2019 (1990\/2011, 58\u201359). These \u2018dominant meanings\u2019 can include the social stereotypes that inform our thinking, including the expectations we have of each other, and hold each other to. Oppressive praise can also contribute to, and be informed by, some other forms of oppression Young articulated: marginalisation, exploitation, powerlessness.<\/p>\n
I try to bring this phenomenon into focus in my forthcoming book, Oppressive Praise. Doing so prompts us to consider further questions about our social practices of praising, such as: what is the social role of praise? Philosophers who have examined praise have tended to focus on praise as a second-personal phenomenon, communicated from one person to another. I argue this is a mistake: praise has a key role in affirming and entrenching values in a community – including oppressive values. How can we transform those social practices of expressing praise so that they are not oppressive? This also prompts us to consider the norms of praise.<\/p>\n
For example, what should we, as praisers, believe about the targets of our praise? In relation to blame, philosophers have suggested we should know, or reasonably believe, that recipients of blame are indeed blameworthy. But if undeserved praise per se doesn\u2019t harm, perhaps we needn\u2019t believe that recipients of praise are indeed praiseworthy. Rather, to avert the harms of oppressive praise, we ought to believe that our praise is not normatively embedded in oppressive expectations; that the social meaning of our praise does not entrench oppressive values.<\/p>\n
What other norms of praise are there? Philosophers have considered standing or distributive norms: from what social position should we praise, and what heed should we pay to how we distribute our praise? How might thinking about oppressive praise shape our understanding of these norms? In the book I formulate and evaluate a set of norms for expressing praise.<\/p>\n
I expect many of us have been recipients of praise. Hopefully that has been welcome, but many of us may have had the experience of being the recipients of oppressive praise. Are there better and worse ways to respond? What about if we are bystanders to such expressions of oppressive praise? And what should we think about certain institutionalised forms of praise, such as the use of statues to honour? My hope is that the book offers an understanding of oppressive praise and also an ameliorative framework, so that we can improve how we praise.<\/p>\n
I do think it is worth attending to how praise can be oppressive, or otherwise harmful; so it is worth carefully scrutinising our practices of expressing praise. But this is not to say there is not immense value in praising, when we do it well. I will continue to praise my children, colleagues, friends and family effusively; but hopefully, in ways that are now more considered, and not harmful or oppressive!<\/p>\n
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