Praise Stretch

Lina, my wife, has been doing exercise/yoga-like routines from Netflix. We are doing a trial run before she goes all in and buys a DVD set. The DVD set is one of those "Three easy payments of $ 79.99." When one does the math and goes, "Yikes."

So, in the download pre-programmed work-out routine, the instructor says things like "Good!" as if she is praising her audience who are doing the routines well. Here is the strange part--there is no audience in real time. It is a general affirmational tone without any awareness of how the audience is actually doing.

For all she knows, her audience might be some dude with a gut who is eating chips and likes to see women stretch. Seriously. Does the instructor want to praise that? Our society tends to think that praising creates praiseworthy behavior. It is actually just the reverse. When we praise without something that deserves praise, it cheapens praise because it is so effusive and sloppy.

When I worked with juvenile delinquents, there were literally hundreds of aphorisms that had developed in years and years of that culture. One that has stuck with me in the 20 some years since is that is profoundly unwise to praise expected behavior. Or behavior that one has no ability to discern and assess.