The study revealed that mistakes themselves are neither good nor bad. Their impact hinges on the broader context. When incompetent people made mistakes, it just reinforced other’s already negative impressions. It was more of the same.

When competent people made mistakes, though, it had the opposite effect. Successful people are hard to identify with. They seem so perfect that it’s hard to connect. And that’s why mistakes can help. Because when otherwise competent people make a mistake once in a while, it humanizes them. It makes them more real, which makes them more likable.

The new tutor was different. She was relational, not gushy, but attentive. She intuitively understood you were working under the weight, the history, of a reputation— that it was “in the air,” waiting to be validated by your first frustration. She knew that any sign of a lack of confidence in your ability could send you into a churn of self-doubt and very likely kill your interest.

As Mark Lepper and his colleagues put it:

Exactly those things that one would do to present information to students most efficiently about the existence and sources of their errors and misconceptions are, at least for unconfident remedial [reputation-threatened] students, precisely the same things that seem likely to further undermine these students’ sense of competence and control.

The expert tutors understood that students’ first need was for someone to believe in their potential to learn, despite their reputation. The best tutors understood that students wouldn’t learn much without this. They understood the importance of being “wise.

Leaving out trust instigated by the less empowered would miss how behaving out of trust— with faith in other people’s capacity for fairness— can be its own source of power, even when, or especially when, it comes from people lower in the social order.

Second, these efforts should involve the participation of as many people as possible. When people feel they haven’t been heard they tend not to trust. But when their input is a regular, normalized part of how a setting functions, they’re better able to trust it even when they disagree.