Flattery is a tool. When someone praises you right before asking for something, check your pockets.

Praise feels good enough that it slips past the part of you that evaluates requests. That is exactly why it gets used that way, often by people who are not consciously scheming. The tell is the sequence: compliment, then the ask, with very little in between. Real appreciation tends to arrive at a random moment with nothing attached to it.

When a compliment is followed quickly by a request, answer the request on its own merits as though the compliment had not happened. You can still say yes. Just make sure the yes is to the thing itself rather than to how that sentence made you feel.