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Concept
Pratfall effect
Summary
In social psychology, the pratfall effect is the tendency for interpersonal appeal to change after an individual makes a mistake, depending on the individual's perceived competence. In particular, highly competent individuals tend to become more likable after committing mistakes, while average seeming individuals tend to become less likable even if they commit the same mistake.
Originally described in 1966 by Elliot Aronson, numerous studies have since been conducted to isolate the effects of gender, self-esteem, and blunder severity on change in appeal and likability. Occasionally referred to as the blemishing effect when used as a form of marketing, generalizations of the pratfall effect are often used to explain the counterintuitive benefits drawn from making mistakes.
Details of the pratfall effect were first described by Aronson in his experiment testing the effects of a simple blunder on perceived attraction. The experimental subjects consisted of male students from the University of Minnesota who would listen to tape recordings of a confederate (actor) pretending to be a contestant for the show College Bowl. The tapes contained staged interviews with difficult questions given to a confederate, who plays the role of either an unrealistically knowledgeable individual that almost always answers correctly (92%) or a mediocre one that answers only a few questions correctly (30%). After the questioning, the strong-performing actor admits to a stellar high school career marked with academic and nonacademic successes, while the unremarkable actor describes an ordinary high school career, earning average grades with weak involvement in extracurriculars. At the end of the interview, some tapes recorded the actor spilling a cup of coffee and apologizing for doing so, while others omitted this portion to serve as a control. Aronson's research found that a knowledgeable blunderer was rated to be more attractive, while the more average ones suffered decreases in their perceived attractiveness.
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