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30 December 2007

The Barnum Effect Try it for yourself.
Works quite well. Had the initial "personality test" been more, err, scientific-looking, it would have worked even better.
posted by Daniel Charms 30 December | 13:22
Heh - I scored 86 percent accurate on this.
posted by Lipstick Thespian 30 December | 13:34
This is a very interesting area of psychology. Exploiting the human tendency to see yourself everywhere allows fortune-tellers, mediums, card readers, and all manner of 'psychics' to make a living off the credulous. Malcolm Gladwell recently wrote a fabulous piece on this in the New Yorker, with regard to criminal profiling - the practice of using details from a crime scene or scenes to 'paint a picture' of the likely suspect. Fascinating stuff. I might go post that at MeFi if it hasn't been up yet.
posted by Miko 30 December | 13:50
I have to disagree with a part of the premise:

They show clearly that people tend to accept vague and general personality descriptions as uniquely applicable to themselves without realising that the same description could be applied to just about anyone.

This is not necessarily the case. One may mark as true that they want people to like them, that they don't live up to their full potential, that sometimes they are more sociable than other times, etc., while fully realizing that these are are characteristics that are true of nearly everyone.

A high score doesn't mean that you accept anything that's fed you, just that you are a relatively normal person. (I got a 60% by marking everything average, and according to the test "results" this would prove that I can be hoodwinked by crappy astrology stuff. Not a logical conclusion.)
posted by taz 30 December | 14:17
True, taz. I knew what this was and just clicked through "good" on every point so I could get to the summary, and got 80%.
posted by Miko 30 December | 14:28
I might go post that at MeFi if it hasn't been up yet.

Knock yourself out. I'm off metafilter.
posted by chuckdarwin 30 December | 14:29
I agree with taz that the perspective given is wrong. This isn't people seeing themselves everywhere, but characteristics that are common among many. It's like going to a NASCAR race and saying, "You are white, you enjoy cooking outside while drinking beer, and you enjoy the company of those like yourself."

The true Barnum Effect here is anyone who believed the article. ;-P
posted by mischief 30 December | 14:37
I disagree with that assertion, though, mischief. These are common characteristics, but the Barnum effect refers not to the truth of the characteristics (they are vague and apply to many people on purpose), but to the high degree of accuracy people ascribe to them as individual personality descriptions, despite the fact that the outcome is the same for everyone. The examples you give with the NASCAR model are based on visual evidence, while the Barnum effect is elicited with statements that refer to invisible personality elements. The idea is that the statements are about characteristics that can't be observed, but are general and vague enough to fit any number of people, yet subjects rate the statements as "highly accurate" as self-descriptions. It's a consistently reproducible phenomenon; see Wikipedia for this:

In 1948, psychologist Bertram R. Forer gave a personality test to his students, and then gave them a personality analysis supposedly based on the test's results. He invited each of them to rate the analysis on a scale of 0 (very poor) to 5 (excellent) as it applied to themselves: the average was 4.26. He then revealed that each student had been given the same analysis:
“ You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker; and do not accept others' statements without satisfactory proof. But you have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic. ”

Forer had assembled this text from horoscopes.

[edit] Variables influencing the effect

Later studies have found that subjects give higher accuracy ratings if the following are true

* the subject believes that the analysis applies only to them
* the subject believes in the authority of the evaluator
* the analysis lists mainly positive traits

See (Dickson and Kelly 1985) for a review of the literature.
posted by Miko 30 December | 15:19
chuckdarwin, I wasn't going to post this, just the Gladwell article, but it's already gone up.
posted by Miko 30 December | 15:20
I got 54% accuracy. A coin toss would have been about as accurate, then.
posted by BoringPostcards 30 December | 16:38
There's a pretty large leap in logic needed to equate how much I feel a statement relates to me to how much I feel it individually relates to me.

(We don't watch movies or read books and think they're biographies, but we do closely identify with characters.)

The information on the Forer experiment reveals that's not the intended reading of the data when it claims the numbers in studies are higher when "the subject believes that the analysis applies only to them".
posted by pokermonk 30 December | 18:54
I got 40%. Not sure what that means.
posted by arse_hat 30 December | 22:36
I've been too exposed to this sort of thing to get drawn in properly; for one thing, using the name "Barnum" in the priming for a scam is kind of a spoiler. For another, I cranked out a bunch of horoscopes recently and, man, compelling vagueness has a very specific odor.
posted by cortex 31 December | 11:03
State Senator Peralta gets his ghetto car carjacked || Don't let anyone say we don't know how to enjoy ourselves in Essex

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