Laughing Off Your Mistakes Makes You Seem More Competent

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How do you react when you call someone the wrong name, or trip over a curb, or wave to a stranger you thought was a friend? 

If you spiral into a pit of embarrassment, you’re certainly not alone. But new research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests you’d be better off laughing at your mistakes.

“Our findings suggest that people often overestimate how harshly others judge their minor social mistakes,” study co-author Övül Sezer of Cornell University said in a statement. “For minor, harmless blunders, laughing at yourself can signal social confidence, reduce tension, and communicate that the mistake was accidental.”

Read more: “Why Is That Funny?”

To investigate how people respond to a social faux pas, Sezer and her team employed a variety of experimental designs tasking more than 3,000 participants with reading stories about people who committed minor blunders, like walking into a glass door at a party. They were then told the (minorly) offending individual either laughed or became embarrassed, and in some cases were even shown photos of people displaying amusement or humiliation. They found that people who laughed off their mistakes were perceived as warmer, more competent, and more authentic. 

“What’s interesting is that embarrassment was often perceived as excessive,” Sezer said. “Observers tended to think that actors who displayed embarrassment were feeling more embarrassed than the situation warranted, while laughing signaled that they recognized the mistake was minor.”

There was one wrinkle in the study, however: If the fictional faux pas resulted in real harm—either to themselves or to someone else—people tended to regard laughter as an inappropriate response. Additionally, the researchers noted, they didn’t study the repeated effects of laughing versus cringing, so it’s unclear what impact they have on our reputations in the long run.

Still, it’s nice to have some scientific evidence for what Louis Armstrong famously sang: “When you’re smiling, the whole world smiles with you.”

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Lead image: Alphavector / Shutterstock

• Jake Currie

  Posted on March 2, 2026

  Jake Currie is a writer based in Brooklyn, NY.