Page 387 - The Social Animal

Liking, Loving, and Interpersonal Sensitivity 369

book staff, and had tried out for the track team but had failed to
make it. On the other two recordings, one of the “superior” young
man and one of the “average” young man, the stimulus person com-
mitted an embarrassing blunder. Near the end of the interview, he
clumsily spilled a cup of coffee all over himself. This “pratfall” was
created by making a tape recording that included sounds of commo-
tion and clatter, the scraping of a chair, and the anguished voice of
the stimulus person saying, “Oh, my goodness, I’ve spilled coffee all
over my new suit.” To achieve maximum control, the tape of the in-
cident was reproduced, and one copy was spliced onto a copy of the
tape of the superior person, while the other copy was spliced onto a
tape of the average person.
The results were striking: The superior person who committed a
blunder was rated most attractive; the average person who commit-
ted the same blunder was rated least attractive. The perfect person
(no blunder) was second in attractiveness, and the mediocre person
(no blunder) finished third. Clearly, there was nothing inherently at-
tractive about the simple act of spilling a cup of coffee. Although it
did serve to add an endearing dimension to the perfect person, mak-
ing him more attractive, the same action served to make the
mediocre person appear that much more mediocre and, hence, less
attractive.This experiment presents stronger evidence to support our
contention that, although a high degree of competence does make us
appear more attractive, some evidence of fallibility increases our at-
tractiveness still further. This phenomenon has been dubbed the
pratfall effect.
More complex experiments have since produced some interest-
ing refinements of this general finding. Basically, the pratfall effect
holds most clearly when, in the mind of the observer, there is an im-
plicit threat of competition with the stimulus person. Thus, an ex-
periment by Kay Deaux demonstrates that the pratfall effect applies
most strongly to males. Deaux found that, although most males in
25
her study preferred the highly competent man who committed a
blunder, women showed a tendency to prefer the highly competent
nonblunderer, regardless of whether the stimulus person was male
or female. Similarly, my colleagues and I found that males with a
moderate degree of self-esteem are most likely to prefer the highly
competent person who commits a blunder, while males with low
self-esteem (who apparently feel little competitiveness with the