Pratfall Effect: How Do Mistakes Influence Attractiveness?
When we make a major mistake, the perception that people who have witnessed it have of us changes. However, it’s not that we are less personally attractive if we screw up, but rather the mechanism by which our degree of likability and respectability changes is somewhat less intuitive than this.
In this article we will describe the variables that intervene in the Pratfall effect, the phenomenon by which attractive people who make mistakes tend to be liked by others more than before, while with unattractive people are even less so when they make a serious mistake Let’s see what exactly this psychological effect consists of.
The American psychologist Elliot Aronson, known for his research on the theory of cognitive dissonance, described in 1966 the Pratfall effect, a psychological phenomenon that consists of an increase or decrease in an individual’s interpersonal attractiveness after he or she makes a mistake
The direction of the effect depends on the degree of competence that other people previously attributed to the person who made the mistake. Thus, those who were perceived as very competent on a general level will tend to be liked more by other people after making a mistake, while if the level of competence is average, attractiveness will be reduced.
In the context of the Pratfall effect The concept “attractive” is understood as a combination of pleasantness and respectability Thus, a person may be attractive to others for being unusually cordial, but also for holding a position with a high level of prestige or for being very intelligent.
The word “pratfall” is an English term that can be loosely translated as “error” although, in fact, the meaning is closer to the colloquial expression “fall on your ass”: it refers to a failure of a certain severity that tends to be embarrassing. for the person who commits it.
The Pratfall effect is influenced by very different variables, among which stand out the level of self-esteem of the observer, their gender and the severity of the mistake committed Later we will explain how each of these factors contributes to increasing or reducing interpersonal attractiveness.
Elliot Aronson’s study
Aronson himself carried out the experiment from which his hypothesis of the Pratfall effect arose. In this study, the experimental subjects, all of them male university students, listened to one of two recorded interviews in which the same actor played two different characters.
One of these men was a very intelligent man, he had had a remarkable life on a personal and professional level and he answered most of the interviewer’s questions correctly. The other character was wrong in most of his answers, was particularly unintelligent and had not achieved great things in his life.
At the end of the interviews the two men made humiliating mistakes (“pratfalls”). These had opposite effects depending on the character: while the experimental subjects evaluated the intelligent man more positively after the error, their opinion of the second one worsened even more.
Subsequently, investigations similar to Aronson’s have been carried out. Although the results have been replicated in a general way, some important nuances involved in this phenomenon have also been clearly determined.
Aronson’s research and subsequent ones that followed the same line have found some striking peculiarities regarding the Pratfall effect. These have mainly to do with variables of a psychosocial nature. It must be taken into account, on the other hand, that this phenomenon falls within the scope of social psychology.
One of the most characteristic aspects of the Pratfall effect is that It is not clear that it occurs in women to the same degree as in men These findings are associated with some relatively old research, so the influence of gender role may be less today in many places.
These studies suggested the personal attractiveness of someone who makes a serious mistake would tend to decrease for women regardless of whether or not they perceive her as an intelligent and/or likable person.
The magnitude of the failure is also very important Attractive people who make minor mistakes become a little less attractive, while if the mistake is serious, other people will like them more but they will also lose a very small part of their respectability. On the other hand, those who are not attractive will be even less so after making a mistake, regardless of the severity.
Another relevant variable is the self-esteem of the person who observes the error: if it is high, he or she will prefer a competent person who does not make a mistake to another who does. In this sense, the social comparison effect is very significant; According to some hypotheses, the Pratfall effect It would be due to the ability to empathize with the person who is wrong
