Trade‐offs of praise and criticism: Parents' responses to children's performance and children's resilience and depression

Abstract

In contrast to cognitive outcomes, parental success‐oriented responses to children's performance enhanced the emotional well‐being of children. Conversely, parental failure‐oriented responses had the opposite impact. Thus, it remains unclear which response or combination of responses parents should employ to maximize their children's development. This research aimed to examine the combined effect of children's perceptions of parental success‐ and failure‐oriented responses on children's depression, with a focus on the mediating role of resilience. A total of 651 pupils (44.7% female, Mage = 10.31, range = 8–12) were investigated in China using polynomial regression and response surface analyses. Our findings suggest that when success‐ and failure‐oriented responses are congruent, failure‐oriented responses counteract the protective effect of success‐oriented responses against children's depression. The two equally matched responses demonstrated a curvilinear main effect on resilience, indicating that higher resilience was associated with the upper–middle range of the two responses. Moreover, children who reported more success‐oriented responses than failure‐oriented responses showed greater resilience and decreased depression. Resilience acted as a mediator for the combined effects of parental success and failure‐oriented responses on children's depression. The study addressed the parenting dilemma, specifically the trade‐off between success‐ and failure‐oriented responses in promoting children's optimal development.