ABSTRACT
Positive self-evaluation is a fundamental human need, enabling individuals to face challenges or pursue new opportunities in their environment. In the past few decades, several lines of research have provided support for the overpowering effect of self-enhancement motivation in directing individuals’ attention and behavior relative to other self-evaluation motives. In this chapter, we briefly summarize the basics of self-enhancement theory with a focus on how it has helped understand the psychology of praise and how some long-standing theoretical debates have informed our understanding of praise. In the second part, we review new theoretical issues that have emerged in recent years and summarize new manifestations of self-enhancement in the study of praise and “real-world” applications of these insights.
