Pratfall effect: how do errors influence attractiveness?
When we make a significant mistake, the perception that we have of the people who have witnessed it is modified. However, it is not that we are less attractive on a personal level if we screw up, but the mechanism by which our degree of agreeability 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 are wrong tend to like others more than before, whereas with unattractive people are even less so when they make a serious mistake . Let's see what exactly this psychological effect consists of.
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What is the Pratfall effect?
The American psychologist Elliot Aronson, known for his research on the theory of cognitive dissonance, described in 1966 the Pratfall effect, a psychological phenomenon consisting of an increase or reduction in the interpersonal attractiveness of an individual after he commits an error .
The direction of the effect depends on the degree of competence that other people previously attributed to who has made a mistake. Thus, those who were perceived as being very competent at a general level will tend to like other people more after committing an error, whereas if the level of competence is medium the attractiveness will be reduced.
In the context of the Pratfall effect the "attractive" concept is understood as a combination of pleasantness and respectability . Thus, a person can be attractive to others for being unusually cordial, but also for occupying a position with a high level of prestige or for being very intelligent.
The word "pratfall" is an English term that can be freely translated as "error" although, in fact, the meaning is closer to the colloquial expression "falling off ass": refers to a failure of some severity that tends to be embarrassing for the person who commits it.
The Pratfall effect is influenced by very different variables, among which the level of self-esteem of the observer, his gender and the seriousness of the fault committed . Later we will explain how each of these factors contributes to the increase or reduction of interpersonal attractiveness.
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The study of Elliot Aronson
Aronson himself carried out the experiment from which arose his hypothesis of the Pratfall effect. In this study, the experimental subjects, all 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, had had a remarkable life on a personal and professional level and answered most of the interviewer's questions correctly. The other character was wrong in most 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 valued the intelligent man more positively after the error, his opinion of the second worsened even more.
Subsequently, investigations similar to that of Aronson have been carried out. Although the results have been replicated in a general way, it has also been possible to clearly determine some important nuances that intervene in this phenomenon.
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Findings
Aronson's research and subsequent ones that followed the same line have found some striking peculiarities with respect to the Pratfall effect. These have to do mainly with psychosocial variables. We must bear in mind, on the other hand, that this phenomenon is part of the field of social psychology.
One of the most characteristic aspects of the Pratfall effect is that it is not clear that it takes place in women to the same degree as in men . These findings are associated with some relatively old research, so the influence of the gender role may be less in many places today.
These studies suggested the personal attractiveness of someone who makes a serious mistake would tend to decrease for women regardless of whether they perceive it as an intelligent and / or nice person or if they do not.
The magnitude of the failure is also very important . Attractive people who make minor mistakes become a little less, while if the failure is serious they will like the rest of the people 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 after making mistakes regardless of the severity.
Another relevant variable is the self-esteem of the person who observes the error: if it is high, it will prefer a competent person who does not make a mistake to another person who does. In this sense, the effect of social comparison 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 .
