I think for what people are trying to measure about one’s character in cases involving authority is whether that person will become easily emotionally enraged, hysterical or steal from your wallet. And it’s true, they are less likely to do that. Whether they commit violence and thievery via degrees of seperation involving underlings is another question, but not the question folk psychological assumptions of authority (“experts”) are trying to ask.

If the goal is to encourage specific behavior, give specific feedback.

However, in eulogies, etc. the behavior being encouraged is usually not something the audience can replicate. Praising a doctor for the methodology of his surgery and the outcomes that he produced in his patients’ elbows won’t apply to most of the audience. If we start from the assumption that there is such a thing as character, like people have been telling us all along, then this is something that can apply to the whole audience, though it may well be hard to measure.

By praising real results in such a setting, one signals that real results are important by spending scarce eulogizing time on talking about real results.

If the person is alive and the act is repeatable it is a different story though. The student I encouraged to do addition and subtraction his own way not only appreciated the signal that he was intelligent, but was able to successfully complete more similar problems in the future.

Sounds like a quote from my McDonald’s training manual. Their term of art is to give behavior feedback, not personality feedback.

On this topic I haven’t encountered better than Professor Koch’s (of Caltech) approach to what you are in his description of consciousness.