r/technology • u/Choobeen • 9h ago

Society Research shows the 'compliment sandwich' is no longer effective - University of Western Ontario

https://phys.org/news/2025-08-compliment-sandwich-longer-effective.html
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u/toukakouken 8h ago

These aren't physical laws. The receiver also has understood the sandwich technique. Once that recognition is there, he proceeds to ignore the bread. So, he can take offense at the criticism.

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u/diatonico_ 30m ago

It's just psychology and human behavior. A (social or communication) tactic that works in one context, doesn't work in another. That tactic being well-known and understood is part of the context.

By the time a "trick" is posted in college textbooks or taught in expensive seminars, it's already on the decline and the bleeding edge is using something else.

4

u/Conscious_Can3226 12m ago

I wish these studies actually went into how people executed the compliment sandwich. Because "i like your color scheme but the whole deck needs to be redone because it's wrong" is a very different experience from "you're going in the right direction and I really like slide 7's visuals, can we do more work on 8-10 because they're coming across as walls of text"

People's social skills have been degrading with the internet and then Covid, and nobody is stepping in yet as a soft skills resource to rebuild them back up. I wouldnt be surprised if there was a collective loss of 'how' to deliver a proper compliment sandwich leading to the conclusion that it's no longer effective vs people just not responding to it overall.