What Good Is Labeling What's Good? Experimental Field Studies on the Empirical Merit of Labeled Praise As a Key Parenting Intervention Element

Calls are rising in intervention research to identify the effective components of interventions (e.g., Piquero et al., 2009). This knowledge should enable the improvement of interventions’ (cost-)effectiveness and the tailoring of interventions to individual families’ needs. Microtrials are a promising approach to stringently test which elements of interventions contribute to overall effectiveness, and to examine which families benefit from which elements. We conducted three field microtrials on one of the key elements of established parenting interventions (e.g., Incredible Years; Parent-Child Interaction Therapy; Parent-Management Training—Oregon): teaching parents to use labeled praise. Labeled praise includes explicit reference to the desired behavior (e.g., “Well done, you cleaned up your toys”) while such reference is absent in unlabeled praise (e.g., “Well done”). The advice to use labeled praise is based on the clinical presumption that children more easily link praise to the praised behavior when praise labels this behavior, and the expectation that children will therefore show a stronger increase in positive behavior when praise is labeled. However, there is a dearth of knowledge on the empirical merit of labeled praise over unlabeled praise. Our studies (N=112 to N=161) were conducted at families’ homes, with children aged 4-8 and their parents. In Study 1, we tested the immediate effects of labeled, unlabeled and no praise on child compliance in a community sample, and possible influences of parents’ praising habits on the effectiveness of labeled and unlabeled praise. In Study 2, we tested both immediate and short-term (i.e., 2-week) effects of labeled, unlabeled and no praise on child compliance in a subclinical sample and examined parents’ preferences to use either labeled or unlabeled praise. In Study 3, we compared the immediate and short-term effects of labeled, unlabeled and no praise on parent-reported and observed child compliance, to distinguish between parental perceived and actual (i.e., observed) effects of praise. The results of our studies do not support the assumption that labeled praise is superior to unlabeled praise. In fact, labeled praise was less effective than unlabeled praise at yielding child compliance (Study 1), and equally effective to unlabeled praise in reducing parent-reported and observed disruptive behavior in children after a two week practice period (Studies 2 and Preliminary findings of Study 3). We discuss the implications of our findings for parenting interventions using labeled praise as a key intervention element.