We always talk about our good aspects to people we just met. We keep talking about the training we received, the stories we achieved, the courses we attended, and even the successes of our spouses, children, and parents. We do not express our flaws, we try to hide our mistakes. The underlying purpose of this effort lies in making ourselves loved/accepted in the environment. Well, have you ever thought that the perfect image we draw to make ourselves seem sympathetic to the other party might make us seem unattractive and unapproachable?
Humans have a wide living space. Work, school, family, courses, hobby friends, neighbors and even the people we meet on the bus and talk to for a few minutes all constitute our environment. We find some of the people in this environment more sympathetic and like them more than others, from the moment we meet them for the first time. There is a reason why we find some people more attractive than others in the human mind, where I believe that nothing happens for no reason or by chance; Pratfall Effect.
Elliot Aronson conducted an experiment at the University of Minnesota in 1966. In the experiment, the audio recordings of 4 different people who were interviewed by asking the same questions were played separately to 48 university students. The concerts were not mutual. Students were not allowed to contact or communicate with the interviewees. Two of the four individuals whose interviews were recorded separately had a high intellectual level, and their past career achievements were excellent. The other two were of average skill. High school graduation averages and other information were shared with the audience in the interview. These 4 people were asked 50 difficult test questions. The questions were the same for all 4 people. Two gifted people answered 92% of the questions correctly. People with medium skills could only know 30%. Of course, the entire meeting was a fictional scenario. Towards the end of the interviews, one of the two gifted people spilled the coffee on the table. When this incident was correctly understood in the audio recording, he gave spontaneous reactions such as "Oh, there was coffee everywhere", laughing slightly. The same scenario was repeated in the recording of one of the medium-ability individuals. As a result, the audience was listened to audio recordings in 4 different categories.
-
Gifted and flawless interview
-
Gifted and clumsy interview
-
Medium talented normal interview
-
Interview with moderate ability and errors They were asked to score between 7 and 7. The results were quite surprising. Among two people with high ability, the one who was clumsy evoked more positive emotions than the one who did not. In other words, flaws made that person more likeable and preferable. The other gifted person, who made no mistakes and portrayed a perfect image, was found to be unapproachable and cold.
The scores of 2 averagely talented people proved that the claim that flaws make people sympathetic is not valid in all cases. Because the medium-skilled person who made the mistake was evaluated worse than the other, even though they received the same score from the test questions. The mistakes made by people we believe to be talented or whom we previously sympathized with make them more sympathetic. However, a mistake made by someone we do not like or find inadequate will cause us to evaluate them more negatively. These results were included in the psychology literature as the 'Pratfall Effect' and were scientifically proven by Elliot Aronson.
According to the Pratfall effect, we distance ourselves from people with perfect images because we do not feel comfortable spending time with them. A perfect person is not found sincere by other people and is evaluated as cold and artificial. We find people who laugh at their mistakes more sympathetic than people who do not accept their mistakes. Of course, the only reason why we find a person sympathetic cannot be just because we find the mistakes he makes endearing. However, it is an undeniable fact that the pratfall effect is a factor that changes our evaluation of that person.
The fact that famous actress Jennifer Lawrence tripped over her dress twice while going to receive the Oscar Award in 2013 was shared in positive words by people on social media. However, if we witnessed the mistake of someone we already found inadequate, we would start to generalize his inadequacy to his entire life and evaluate him more negatively.
It is claimed that models falling on the podium or presenters who continue laughing when their tongue slips use this effect specifically for image management. Going back to the beginning of our article, the flaws we hide and the successes we exaggerate do not make us more loved as we think. A person's basic need in relationships is to be accepted as he is. Trying to hide our flaws and not make mistakes will cause us to make unnecessary effort, and the love we gain by pretending to be someone we are not will not satisfy us. We cannot know what our clumsiness and mistakes, which seem like mistakes to us, have gained us in the eyes of others. So be yourself no matter what. People who don't love you will always find a reason not to love you, no matter how hard you try not to make mistakes. Even your most obvious mistakes seem pleasant to those who love you.Read: 0
