The Beautiful Mess

Two different judgements

Bruk, Scholl and Bless ran seven studies. They asked people to judge acts of vulnerability: confessing romantic feelings, admitting a mistake, revealing a physical imperfection, asking for help.

When people imagined doing these things themselves, they judged them negatively, as exposure and weakness. When they imagined someone else doing the same things, they judged them positively, as courage and honesty. The researchers called this the beautiful mess effect.

The effect held across different situations. The researchers also tested it in a real-life setting, not only in imagined ones.

What to do

Assume your own judgement is the biased one

You are not a fair judge of how your openness comes across. The error is known, it has been measured, and it always goes against you. So the version of the story where it goes badly is the one to trust least.

In seven studies, people judged showing vulnerability more negatively when they imagined doing it themselves than when they imagined someone else doing the same thing.

Why it happens

The authors explain it this way. You think about your own vulnerability in concrete detail: the shaking hands, the wrong word, the silence afterwards.

You think about another person's vulnerability in general terms: here is someone who said a hard thing. The general view is more positive and more forgiving of risk. That is why the same act looks brave from a metre away.

This is not a pep talk. It describes the different positions the two of you are looking from.

What to do

Step back on purpose

Before you decide not to say something, describe it in one general sentence, the way a friend would describe it. That is closer to what the other person will see.

The difference came from how people think about the act. They picture their own vulnerability in concrete detail and other people's in general terms, and the general view is the more positive one.

Step 1: Go first

Aron and colleagues gave pairs of strangers thirty-six questions that became more personal as they went on. The two people took turns answering, for about forty-five minutes.

The pairs felt closer afterwards than pairs who made small talk. It is now the standard lab method for creating closeness.

Two features of the design matter more than the questions themselves. The questions became personal gradually, and both people shared equally. Neither person poured everything out at the other.

What to do

Share a little, then wait

Say one true thing a little earlier than feels safe. Then stop and let them match it. If they do, go one step further. If they do not, you have lost nothing and you have learned something.

When strangers shared personal things gradually and took turns, they felt much closer after forty-five minutes than strangers who made small talk.

Limits of the study: This was a lab procedure with set questions and a willing partner. It shows that the method works. It is not a script for a bar.

Step 2: Leave the small mistake alone

In Aronson's 1966 experiment, people listened to a recording of a candidate for a quiz team. In one version he was nearly perfect and answered about 92% of the questions correctly. In another he was mediocre, at about 30%.

Half of each group then heard him spill a cup of coffee over himself. The spill made the nearly perfect candidate more attractive to listeners.

After a small mistake, the instinct is to apologise too much and smooth it over. Drop that part. Too much apology turns a small human moment into a big awkward one.

What to do

Do not over-apologise

Acknowledge the mistake once, lightly, and carry on. The mistake is not the problem. The three minutes of anxious apology afterwards is what people remember.

A clumsy mistake made a highly competent person more attractive to others.

Limits of the study: The study is from 1966. It used a tape recording, a small sample, and only male candidates. Trust the direction of the result, not its size, and read the next section before you use it.

When this does not work

This half of the finding is usually left out. The same spill made the mediocre candidate less attractive.

So the charm depends on the situation. A spill makes a clearly competent person seem more human. It makes a person who has shown nothing seem worse.

This reverses the usual advice. The lesson is not that showing more flaws makes people like you. The lesson is to show what you are good at first, and then stop trying to control the rest.

What to do

Show you are capable first

If nobody in the room knows yet what you are good at, do not start with your flaws. Give people a reason to be interested first. After that, an imperfection works in your favour.

The same mistake that made the highly competent person more attractive made the mediocre person less attractive.

Step 3: Send the message you deleted

Kumar and Epley asked people to write a letter of thanks to someone who had mattered to them. The writers then predicted how the person would feel on reading it.

The writers were wrong in three ways. They overestimated how awkward the person would feel. They underestimated how good the person would feel. And they underestimated how surprised the person would be.

The authors' point is not that gratitude is nice. Their point is that a wrong prediction stops people from expressing it. People hold back because they predict badly, not because they do not care.

What to do

Stop polishing the wording

The study found that the people who received the letters were moved simply to get one, while the writers worried about the wording. The message you already drafted is good enough. Deleting it is the only mistake.

People who expressed gratitude greatly overestimated how awkward the other person would feel, and underestimated how good and how surprised they would feel.

Everything above describes going first by one small step and then waiting. None of it describes pouring everything out. The closeness procedure worked because it was gradual and both people shared. Telling a stranger about your worst week without being asked is not what the experiment tested, and the beautiful mess effect does not cover it.

It also stops working if you do it to get something. Openness that is offered as a trade feels like a trade, and the other person can tell better than you can.

Note the limit on the spilled-coffee finding in particular. The evidence says a mistake helps someone whose competence is already visible. It does not say that being worse at things makes you likeable. If you are anxious enough to need this lesson, you are the person most likely to hear it that way, so be careful.