The Pratfall Effect gives me hope; people like imperfect people better. Perfectionism is not all it’s cracked up to be. Fascinating.

The basis of the effect was a study at the University of California led by Elliot Aronson where a researcher was invited to answer a series of quiz questions. The contestant answered competently and scored 90%. A team of scientists then created two tapes: one that was unchanged and one in which the contestant could be heard spilling a fictitious cup of coffee over himself at the end. These two tapes were then played to a series of panels who were asked to rate the likeability of the contestants. In all of the studies, the panels rated the person spilling the cup of coffee in the second tape higher than the person in the first tape.