© 2026 South Carolina Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
SC Public Radio's statewide network is experiencing intermittent outages and programming issues due to ongoing infrastructure upgrades. Our team is working to keep these disruptions to a minimum and to resolve issues that do arise. During broadcast outages, streaming on this site, the SCETV App, the NPR App, and smart speakers will remain unaffected.

If compliments make you feel super awkward, this comic is for you

Love your outfit! Great presentation! Cool glasses! When someone praises you, do you accept it? Or dismiss it?

Your reaction says a lot about how you feel about yourself, and it can affect how the other person feels too, say researchers.

Social psychologist Erica Boothby and behavioral scientist Xuan Zhao explain the science of compliments — and make the case for accepting someone's kind remarks about you.

/
/
/
/
/
/
/
/
/
/


This comic was edited by visual editor Beck Harlan. We'd love to hear from you. Leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823, or email us at LifeKit@npr.org.

Listen to Life Kit on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and sign up for our newsletter.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Corrected: August 4, 2025 at 11:37 AM EDT
A previous version of this story misspelled Xuan Zhao's last name as Zhou.
Tags
Andee Tagle
Andee Tagle is a reporter-producer for NPR's Life Kit podcast.
Malaka Gharib is the digital editor of the NPR podcast Life Kit.