Same-gender compliments
Compliment patterns appear to be quite different when the complimenter and complimentee are the same gender from when they are different genders, and differences between males and females still arise even within same-gender interactions. In data from New Zealand, it was noted that women tended to compliment each other considerably more often than men complimented each other. This statistic is reflected in further data that showed that women gave two-thirds of the recorded compliments and received three-quarters of them. Compliments between men comprised a mere 9 percent of the data. Similar patterns have been noted in studies of English speakers from other regions as well.Compliments are usually classified into one of four categories, depending on what they refer to:
- appearance
- ability and performance
- possessions
- personality
Men were found to compliment each other based on possessions more often than they compliment women based on possessions. Men rarely complimented each other based on appearance in both the New Zealand and American data, but in the American data it seemed compliments based on appearance were less commonly received by men from women than in the New Zealand data.
Opposite-gender compliments
Studies that use data from American interactions show that male-female compliments are significantly more frequent than female-male compliments, following the general pattern that women receive the most compliments overall, whether from other women or from men. Much attention has been given to the pronounced difference in compliment topic in male-female versus female-male compliments. A particular study done on a college campus found that men gave women almost twice (52%) as many compliments on physical appearance as women gave men (26%). This tendency to praise physical attractiveness (as opposed to "skill, possession, etc.") was attributed to several theories:
1) Women were more wary of giving compliments, especially those regarding physical appearance, for fear of being interpreted as too forward and romantically assertive.
2) Alternately, men readily gave more obvious compliments. Male initiation of romantic relations is more socially acceptable, so a misinterpreted compliment would not be viewed as unnatural.
3) Men are less accustomed to respond to or expect admiration related to physical appearance that is not an expression of romantic interest. This is attributed to the relative rarity of the sincere male-male compliment in comparison to the near-ubiquitous female-female compliment.
4) There is an expectation among both genders that women place greater significance on physical appearance than do men, and would therefore be more likely to give and receive compliments based on this quality.
5) An additional explanation from Wolfson posits that in the "American pattern", since men rarely give/receive appearance-related compliments from other men and rarely receive appearance-related compliments from women, the topic of physical attractiveness is not an appropriate topic for compliments from either men or women. She notes that such compliments only occur when the male is much younger than the female.
Compliment responses
Just as there are differences of compliment responses among separate cultures, there are also differences among men and women within the same culture. American women tend to give and receive more compliments than men do. The idea that women's speech activity works much differently compared to that of men can be observed through compliment responses, as women often work at creating and reaffirming solidarity with compliment response strategies. Wolfson found that elaborate responses to compliments among women occur between intimate, status-unequal, and status-equal acquaintances, and that a majority of elaborate responses occurred between status-equal women.
There are major differences in how men and women perceive compliments that are given by the other sex. Shotland and Craig (1988) concluded that both sexes can differentiate between friendly behavior and sexually based behavior but that men perceive situations more sexually than women. They hypothesize that this difference in perception is due to the difference between the thresholds of sexual intent of men and women. Therefore, women misjudge interested behavior as friendly behavior because they have a high threshold of sexual intent. Men, on the other hand, misjudge friendly behavior as interested behavior because they have a low threshold for sexual intent. This difference in threshold levels affects the subject matter of compliments given between men and women as well as how they respond to the compliments given.
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- January 24 is National Compliment Day in the United States
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