I recently came across a study from Sacred Heart University, which stated the following: one of the groups had to determine which compliments were the most meaningful they received.
I would like to note that the material that was processed was quite crude, however, very interesting to evaluate. So, back to the research.
The results revealed that out of 79 men and 129 women, the majority described compliments related to personality or character as the most significant for their self-esteem (males — 55.6%, females — 72.1%). In other words, when we receive evaluations of our appearance and exclamations of ‘Oh, you look so cool today!’ or ‘This dress/jeans/jacket suits you so well,’ then subconsciously we feel much more confident. After all, we tried so hard, and now we got the result of our work.