Pratfall effect: how do errors influence attractiveness?

When we make a major mistake, the perception that the people who have witnessed it have of us changes. However, it is not that we are less attractive on a personal level if we screw up, but that the The mechanism by which our degree of agreeableness and respectability changes is somewhat less intuitive than this.

In this article we will describe the variables involved in the Pratfall effect, the phenomenon by which which attractive people who are wrong tend to like 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.

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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 that consists in an increase or decrease in an individual's interpersonal attractiveness after the individual makes a mistake.

The direction of the effect depends on the degree of competence that other people previously attributed to the one who made a mistake. Thus, those who were perceived as very competent at a general level will tend to be liked more by the rest of the people after making a mistake, while if the level of competition is medium the attractiveness is will reduce.

In the context of the Pratfall effect the concept "attractive" is understood as a combination between pleasantness and respectability. Thus, a person can be attractive to others because they are unusually cordial, but also because they hold a position with a high level of prestige or because they are 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 "falling off your ass": refers to a failure of a certain seriousness that tends to be embarrassing for the person who made it. commit.

The Pratfall effect is influenced by very different variables, among which stand out the level of self-esteem of the observer, his gender and the seriousness of the mistake committed. Later we will explain how each of these factors contributes to the increase or decrease of interpersonal attractiveness.

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Elliott Aronson's studio

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 characters different.

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 they valued the intelligent man more positively after the mistake, their opinion of the latter worsened even more.

Subsequent investigations similar to Aronson's 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 regarding the Pratfall effect. These have to do mainly with variables of a psychosocial nature. It must be taken into account, on the other hand, that this phenomenon falls within the field 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 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 her as an intelligent and/or nice person or not do.

The magnitude of the failure is also very important.. Attractive people who make minor mistakes become slightly less attractive, while if the mistake is serious, the rest of the people will like it 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, whatever the severity.

Another relevant variable is the self-esteem of the person who observes the error: if it is high, they will prefer a competent person who does not make any mistakes to another 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.