People will like you more if you flop
The Pratfall Effect, or why we love imperfect people
This is the ninth post in a six-week series on Failure Tolerance as a Magnetic Practice. If you want access to the full curriculum for this series, subscribe to The Twelfth House.
We have reached Week 5 in our failure tolerance series and I hope, by now, you’ve at least opened your heartmindsoul to the concept of failing and perhaps, failing big time!
If you’re still breaking out into a cold sweat thinking about failing and could use some “proof” that failing is a thing worth doing, might I introduce you to the Pratfall Effect aka where people like you MORE because you failed?
Definition time
The Pratfall Effect, according to wikipedia (whomst I trust more than any gpt) is a social psychology concept where “highly competent individuals tend to become more likeable after committing mistakes, while average-seeming individuals tend to become less likeable even if they commit the same mistake.”
In a truly cruel and ironic twist, it turns out that if you try to be perfect-in-every-way to preemptively defend against criticism and (ultimately) prove that you are VERY MUCH EXTREMELY LOVABLE to others… you might be unwittingly inviting harsher criticism into your life and kinda turning people off with the “I’ve never farted in public” persona.
Your obsession with perfection is ruining your vibe
I’m going to give you real life examples but first, I would like to take us into the world of the 2004 Mary Kate and Ashley film, New York Minute.
If you have not seen every single thing MKA has touched (can’t relate), here’s a quick synopsis: MKA play twin sisters (duh lol), one is high-strung little miss perfect, Jane, and the other is a quirky rocker chick, Roxy.1
Jane, pink-loving preppy scholar, is annoying and obsessed with perfection. Roxy, wearing a hat that carbon dates the film to 2004, is a cool and unhinged. In the beginning of the film, we root for Roxy and think “get a grip, Jane.” They both need to go into New York City, Jane for a college scholarship interview and Roxy to meet Simple Plan. Normal teenage girl stuff.
Of course, hijinks ensue and they find themselves in a race against the clock for Jane to make it to the interview. Over the course of the film, we watch Roxy mess up a bunch and get annoyed (Pratfall Effect) we also see Jane loosen up and find ourselves rooting for her (Pratfall Effect). They open up and realize they are stronger together. Sisters 4 evaaaa.
SPOILER ALERT: By the literal grace of god herself, Jane makes it to her interview and cinches the scholarship. Afterwards, the judge says that Jane “didn’t just want to win. She absolutely refused to fail.”
I’d argue, though, that Jane DID fail, repeatedly. Her plans continuously fell apart the entire film. It’s literally what moved the plot forward. If she called it quits after the first failure, it would’ve been a movie about Jane taking the world’s saddest train ride back to the suburbs.
Jane refused to give up. Her perfectly laid out plans fell apart and then, with the help of her extremely type B sister, she found another pathway to thing that she wanted.
Siri, play Tubthumping by Chumbawumba.
Pratfall Effect IRL
If you’re currently like “okay, KP, that just an early-aughts movie and not reality?”
First, way harsh, Tai, and second, I have a couple of IRL examples for ya. Here’s how the Pratfall Effect shows up ✨in the culture✨
How we see the Pratfall Effect in politics
Every four years, a ton of folks in the US say to themselves “Sure, they might be the most experienced, most prepared, most intelligent, most competent person for the job … but would I get a beer with this presidential candidate?” and then vote accordingly. 🙃
A lot of politicians struggle with the beer vibe check because their jobs up until that moment tend to demand the performance of perfection, or at least competency. Many politicians are unwilling to show real flaws or fail publicly, and then they reach the “would I get a beer with them” stage of their career and try to get vulnerable and “real” real quick, which feels calculated and kinda weird. Not beer-sharing material!
A politician being open and honest about a flop makes them so much more likable. Currently Tim Walz is on a town hall tour, admitting to the failures of the 2024 election! In areas of the country that didn’t even consider voting for him! And the people LOVE him for it!
Celebrities and The Pratfall Effect
Before the invention of the smart phone and the age of the influencer, being a celebrity was an opaque, glamorous profession. When even the glamour got boring, (P)people (both the general public AND the magazine) cared more about how stars were “just like us” than different from us.
Celebrities who earnestly and accidentally failed in public earned themselves a coveted ~relatable~ status.
For a public figure, nailing the right amount of relatability is like winning a golden skeleton key. We root for people who we can empathize with; in a Jungian shadow kind of way, we see the best parts of ourselves in the people that we relate to and are free to celebrate those traits in ourselves by cheering for the other.
Jennifer Lawrence falling up the stairs at the 2013 Oscars is the perfect example. She kept it rolling and was funny about it in a way that charmed the masses. Sure, she was a 22-year-old acting phenom (she’d actually been nominated for Best Actress two years earlier for performance in Winter’s Bone at TWENTY years old) who’s probably in the top 1% of talented creative people in the world… not so relatable. But tripping on stairs? Whomst amongst us hasn’t????
J-Law’s public Pratfall earned her the title of “most likeable girl in Hollywood” for years.2
Everybody likes the underdog
The baseball team that wins year after year? Snoozefest with a side of evil empire vibes. The underdog team that has been cursed for 86 years and then wins the World Series? SO compelling and cinematic they make a romcom called Fever Pitch.
To Pratfall or not to Pratfall?
You’re a highly competent and capable person — to everyone else, it looks like you get the answer right most of the time.
Admitting to failure or a mistake you’ve made doesn’t make you seem suddenly incompetent; it makes you seem like a person who is humble and self-aware enough to know what their shortcomings might be.
In a way, the Pratfall Effect kind of shows an outside viewer that while it might look like everything comes easily to you, it doesn’t. For better or worse, sharing that we’ve worked hard to earn our knowledge, expertise, or success can make our perceived good fortune easier to swallow for an observer. It’s endearing.
I think Pratfalling works best when you’re being honest about your shortcomings and not over-inflating your issues. If go too hard a purposefully mess up or “fail” too often, it becomes slapstick-y and false. You end up seeming more like a sideshow clown than a capable person earnestly sharing a failure. That inauthenticity is actually what makes you seem incompetent — not necessarily the mistakes.
The Pratfall Effect is less about sharing 15 photos of you crying and more about saying, “here’s this thing that didn’t go the way I wanted and here’s how I’m getting back up again.”
If you’re lucky, you’ll end up on an adventure so wacky and wild that Rotten Tomatoes will get you an 11% rating and you will meet Simple Plan.
I want to open this up to the class. When does failure make someone endearing for you? Who has failed in a way that you liked? Who has taken it too far? How can you sprinkle a little failure in your day-to-day?
the least believable part of this film, of which there are many, is that a mom would name her twin babies “Jane” and “Roxy”
Because I am nuancenistx [nuance + maxxinista but make it gender neutral??? still work shopping], I want to note that employing the Pratfall Effect too often to the point of what some might consider inauthenticity could subject you to cruel whiplash, especially if you’re marginalized in any way. Rayne Fisher Quann has a great piece about the term she coined, being “woman’d, ” where the general public goes from stanning to absolutely hating a woman in what feels like 5 seconds.
This happened to Jennifer Lawrence a few years after the Oscars fall. The world decided she was simultaneously too special and successful and trying too hard to be “relatable.” She needed to be taken down a peg. Overnight, she was dubbed Cringe. Cue the “Jennifer Lawrence being annoying for 15 minutes straight” montage.
Eventually, Lawrence disappeared from the public eye long enough for people to forget why they didn’t like her. She’s back, she’s booked, she’s busy, she’s stupid rich. She can be considered culturally annoying for five years and the paychecks will still clear.
Nuance on nuance moment: obviously if a thin young wealthy white woman can experience the onslaught of public hatred for “trying to be relatable,” it’s probably way worse for any other intersection.
I think the Pratfall Effect applies best when you think about w.r.t. the people already in your orbit that do not take part in digital hate crimes.
Ooh this is interesting--and I always appreciate a good MKA throwback, that movie was a BANGER (The Challenge is another great one.)
I think about people I've had crushes on or just really looked up to and how seeing them mess up mildly or get embarrassed secretly feels kind of good--not in a mean way, but it just makes them less intimidating and more approachable.
This series inspired me to challenge myself to share a video on substack everyday this month as a way to build up my failure/discomfort tolerance. My rules are 1. no apologizing, 2. no more than 2 filming attempts, and 3. I can think about what I'm going to say but no writing any kind of script. I'm working on being more okay with the way i express myself, even when it's messy and disjointed and includes 15 second pauses where I lose my train of thought.
Thank you for this series 🙏
This actually makes so much sense. I eat it up when someone opens up about their failures bc it’s relatable, humanizes them, and I’m nosey. But it seems like it’s important to find that sweet spot between sharing the flops versus sharing too much, lest we become the tragic figure people are no longer invested in. Also need this last meme on a vision board or my planner!!!