How to deal with PhD advisor ignoring correct answers I am a PhD student. I am feeling something unusual in my PhD: to me it appears that my supervisor ignores my correct answers and always gives me a feedback when my answer is wrong. I know this is a good thing, but the problem is that due to this kind of his behaviour I always feel demotivated and my confidence has gone very low. These days I try not to give many answers because I fear being wrong, which gives the (incorrect) impression that I am not curious about research. To me it looks as though in academia people will not highlight positive things about you, but they will highlight negative things about you. 

Question : How to deal with this constant negative feedback in academia as a PhD student?

One obvious solution is not to pay attention to these things; but that is not working for me.
Different people have different needs when it comes to motivation, for some, this means positive reinforcement and encouragement when things are going well, for others, this means receiving negative feedback and constructive criticism when things aren't going so well. The issue is often that supervisors aren't aware of your needs, and manage their students with whatever approach they've used in the past / has worked with previous students. 

I had a similar experience with my PhD supervisor, and it took us the best part of a year to come to a mutual understanding over how we could both accept things being done. Ultimately though, he's never going to be a positive person, so whilst tempering his approach, he's still far more likely to criticise than praise. A few things that helped me during my PhD:


Make use of your co-supervisor / advisor / members of your thesis committee. Personally, I had a far better relationship with my co-advisor, so would speak to her when things weren't going well / I felt my supervisor was being unreasonably critical. She'd also been in the department with my supervisor for a long time, so could often bring things up in conversation with him that I couldn't. 
Make use of your supervisors other PhD students who you know have a good relationship with him. Rather than "I think this _____", go with "I was discussing this with XX and we came to the conclusion that ______"- even if you're still wrong, you avoid some of the initial criticism / hostility. 
Own your PhD. One of the hardest bits of advice I got given when I was unhappy with my supervisor was that I  was somewhat responsible for owning my research. From your supervisors point of view this is your project and you should be driving it, more often than not you should know the answer, or at least be aware of the issues regarding your knowledge.