Simply telling someone they are awesome will have no actual affect if they don't believe what you are saying Yeah, the same goes with child development - there

Simply telling someone they are awesome will have no actual affect if they don't believe what you are saying Yeah, the same goes with child development - there's quite a lot of research that says that it is counterproductive to praise a kid for something that they don't believe is praiseworthy. But there are surely cultural variations to this. For example, I occasionally have had waitstaff in (US) restaurants where when I order an item on the menu will say something like "Excellent choice" or "Awesome". That really feels wrong to me, but since they do it, I suspect it works well at least on some people. So maybe the same thing happens here.