<p>Few researchers have examined whether the effects of person praise (i.e., praising personal qualities) on motivation and performance vary depending on the manner of feedback students expect to receive regarding their performance. In this study, person praise (person praise vs. no praise) and feedback manner (task-involving vs. ego-involving) were the between-subject variables. The participants were 152 junior high school students. Our results revealed that under the ego-involving feedback condition, those receiving person praise attempted to answer more questions and thus had higher performance than those who did not receive praise. However, under the task-involving feedback condition, those receiving person praise attempted to answer fewer questions and thus had poorer performance than those who did not receive praise. This was mainly because person praise led the participants to feel more positively about themselves, which may have distracted them from the task and undermined their motivation under the task-involving feedback condition.</p>