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> It turns out that it is just not an effective way to convince anyone of anything or to change behavior. It is demonstrated in animals as well as in humans.

Citation needed? I mean, I just want to read the paper where criticizing animals was shown to:

> It can have a horribly diminishing effect of destroying someone’s self worth and stopping a person from believing in themselves.

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Yeah, the author used some strong language. He obviously should have started off each sentence with "In my humble opinion".

"Effective" is a value word, so no study can prove it without first defining it (which would probably require 4 or 5 studies itself). However, I believe he's merely referring to cognitive dissonance, which can be briefly stated as the reason we tend to resolve mental stress by ignoring logic.

Also he said it "can" have a horribly diminishing effect. He might only have been claiming 1 in 10922. That's a pretty weak proposition, ergo there are dozens of studies that proved it. In my humble opinion.

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