Barnum effect

[Teacher]

The Barnum effect consists in the peculiarity of a person perceived as completely reliable descriptions of his personality and assessments of a general nature, the way of occurrence of which is presented as scientific or ritual, magical.

People specifically perceive generalized descriptions of their personality. When some people read astrological portraits, they tend to trust them, are convinced that these characteristics are absolutely suitable for them. However, these statements are general, vague and therefore suitable for everyone, since they do not really describe anyone. Such features of perception are called by psychologists the Barnum effect - in honor of the famous American entrepreneur in the past.

The term was proposed by the American psychologist A. Farn (some sources claim that its author is the psychologist Paul Mil). Psychologists define the Barnum effect as the tendency (readiness) of people to perceive uncritically as an accurate description of their personality general, vague, vague, rather banal statements, even if it is not very clear how these statements were obtained.

This effect is also called the Forer effect, since it was Bertram Forer in 1948 who first conducted an experiment in which he demonstrated its action. The students completed the test, and the researcher assured that, based on its results, he would conduct a psychological analysis of their personalities. However, instead of real analysis, he gave everyone the same text from the horoscope. Forer then asked each student to rate their personality descriptions on a five-point scale. The average mark he received was 4.26.

Here is a text proposed by B. Barnum, which has been used by other researchers in similar studies: “You need to be loved and respected by other people, and at the same time, you are quite self-critical. Although you have some personal flaws, you are able to compensate for them. You have significant potential that you have not yet benefited from. You appear to be a disciplined and confident person, but in your soul you are worried and feel insecure. Sometimes you are overwhelmed by doubts whether you made the right decision, whether you did the right thing. You prefer variety and change, and you get frustrated when you are constrained by strict rules. You are proud of yourself as an independent smart person, you do not take other people's judgments on faith without sufficient evidence. However, you think that you shouldn ' t be too frank and sincere with others. Sometimes you are extroverted, affable and outgoing, and other times you are introverted, cautious, reserved. Some of your aspirations are unrealistic. "

Barnum's ingenious experiment was repeated hundreds of times, and the effect was consistently repeated. A French psychologist ran an advertisement in newspapers offering the services of an astrologer. Having received hundreds of orders, the psychologist sent out to his clients the same horoscope, consisting of general abstract judgments. More than 200 people sent letters to the psychologist full of gratitude for the extremely accurate forecast.

The Barnum effect can be attributed to a strong self-interest. Psychologists have been researching this effect for about 40 years. To some extent, they found out in what conditions a person is inclined to react in this way to generalized descriptions of his personality, when people tend to believe this, and what properties of those judgments most stimulate this effect.

Psychologist Ross Stagner conducted an experiment according to B. Barnum's scheme with more experienced people. He invited 68 employees to fill out a psychological questionnaire, on the basis of which it was possible to draw up a fairly detailed description of their personality. He also drew up one characteristic ("fake"), in which he used 13 phrases from different horoscopes. The researcher read out the characteristics of the respondents, claiming that this description was made on the basis of a psychological test. He also asked to determine to what extent each phrase corresponds to reality, to what extent reflects the character of the researched. More than 30% of the participants believed that their psychological portraits were written surprisingly accurately, 40% - quite accurately, no one defined their characterization as completely false. It is significant that quite critical people took part in the experiment,

Most of the participants recognized the following phrases as the most accurate: “You prefer diversity in life, and you start to get bored if you are limited by strict rules”, “Although you have some personal flaws, you usually know how to cope with them ”; the most inappropriate: "There are minor problems in your sex life," "Your hopes are sometimes rather unrealistic."

Characteristically, the Barnum effect works only on positive statements.

Here's another example of this effect. Australian professor, psychology teacher Robert Treven annually asks first-year students to write down their dreams or describe their vision of the famous "Rorschach spots". After that, the professor, in great secrecy, hands over to each student the same "psychological analysis of personality" of 13 phrases, which Stagner used, and asks for an assessment of how he succeeded in the characterization.

When students declare in front of the audience that each individual analysis the professor has made is correct, Trevin lets one look at each other's papers. According to the professor, such a study is a good start for studying psychological courses.

An interesting point is that the strength of the Barnum effect is not influenced by the prestige of an astrologer or psychologist, and gullibility is inherent in both men and women.

R. Snyder studied the satisfaction with the horoscope compiled by him (one content for all). More satisfied were those who, before drawing up a horoscope, the astrologer asked for the year, month, day and time of birth. Snyder also found that the subjects considered the results of the astrological analysis of personality to be very reliable when there were five times more positive judgments than negative ones in it. If the description contained twice as many negative judgments as positive, then the subjects did not consider it reliable.

People who are anxious, upset, overwhelmed with anxiety, not very happy, who are looking for an opportunity to get some support, want to get rid of oppressive experiences and insecurity, are more inclined to perceive descriptions as reliable.

So, take note of this the next time you wonder how exactly the next "Supreme Sorcerer" will read your character just by looking into your eyes.

You are Hostages!