PhronesisCompulsive praise inflation—the chronic pattern of responding to work, contribution, or performance with maximally positive feedback regardless of actual quality—is analyzed here as a wrong attractor W_PI in the phase space of evaluative responsiveness. We define the ground state S^0 as calibrated honest affirmation: feedback that is proportionate to actual quality, that preserves meaningful differentiation between excellent and good and merely adequate work, and that allows praise to carry genuine information about where the recipient actually stands.
Displacement D() measures the deviation from S^0 at each evaluative moment, and the integrated displacement = D()\,d serves as a scalar index of chronic calibration-collapse. The maximum-positive architecture arises when the evaluator's aversion to the discomfort of honest feedback is routed through inflation as an affect-management strategy, a conflict-avoidance mechanism, and a social warmth performance via superlative language.
We formalize these mechanisms, examine how the feedback scale progressively compresses toward its maximum under repeated inflation, distinguish calibrated affirmation from both compulsive inflation and from withholding, and describe return paths through proportionality restoration and the rebuilding of trust as the foundation of honest affirmation. Nine formal propositions organize the theoretical core.
The framework draws on signal detection theory, Baumeister's work on self-esteem and performance, Hattie and Timperley's feedback model, Bandura's self-efficacy theory, and the literature on epistemic harm in evaluative relationships.