The Anatomy of Encouragement: Addressing the What,Why,When,Who,and For Whom of Encouragement Messages

Abstract

Encouragement, the expression of affirmations to enhance hope, inspiration, confidence, perseverance, or courage in a person, is a commonly used positive social action. However, little is known about how encouragement is helpful to recipients. To address this gap, we examined the perceived positive impact of receiving encouragement messages among 270 U.S. adults. Participants recalled a message of encouragement they received at least 1 year ago and responded to questions concerning this message. We examined the relationships among (a) four content features of encouragement messages (facilitation of insight, confidence enhancement, potential-focused affirmations, and caring expressions), (b) three proposed psychosocial mechanisms (participants’ new beliefs, new behaviors, and closer relationships with their encouragers as a result of receiving the encouragement messages), and (c) the perceived positive, long-term impact on participants. Encouragement messages that contained the facilitation of insight, confidence enhancement, and caring expressions demonstrated a more positive perceived long-term impact on recipients. The facilitation of insight was the only content feature positively associated with all three psychosocial mechanisms. We also identified several mediation effects, the strongest of which was the path from the instillation of insight to new beliefs to positive impact. Additionally, we detected several moderation effects and a moderated mediation effect that addressed the type of situation covered by the encouraging messages, as well as the encouragers’ and recipients’ gender. Combined, these findings underscore the utility of incorporating the instillation of insight in effective encouragement messages and indicate that people could benefit from training to enhance their skills in encouraging others.