The Barnum effect is a psychological phenomenon that makes people mistakenly think that a vague character description is highly consistent with oneself. This article analyzes its principles, psychological experiments and impact in detail, and provides ways to avoid being deceived to help you improve your critical thinking.
What is the Barnum effect?
The Barnum effect is a psychological phenomenon, which refers to people who highly agree with some vague, general and universal personality descriptions, believing that these descriptions are tailor-made for themselves, but in fact these descriptions can be applied to many people. The name of the Barnum effect comes from a famous American circus owner, PT Barnum, who is good at using people’s psychological hints to attract audiences and is considered ’every minute’. There is a fool born” creator.
How was the Barnum effect discovered?
The Barnum effect was first discovered by American psychologist Bertram R. Forer in 1948 through an experiment. He conducted a psychological test on 39 students and told them that they would give each of them a personality analysis report based on the test results. A week later, Fowler sent each student a report and asked them to rate the accuracy of the report, from 0 (lowest) to 5 (highest). In fact, the report received by each student is the same, including the following 13 statements:
- You really need others to like and appreciate you.
- You tend to criticize yourself.
- You have a lot of untapped abilities that can be converted into your own strengths.
- Although you have some personality shortcomings, you can usually make up for them.
- Your sexual adjustment brings you some problems.
- You are usually self-disciplined and self-controlled to the outside world, but you often feel worried and lack security at the heart.
- You sometimes wonder if you have made the right decisions and things.
- You prefer to have a certain degree of change and are dissatisfied with being restricted.
- You consider yourself an independent thinker and will not accept statements from others that lack sufficient arguments.
- You think it is unwise to be too honest with others.
- You are sometimes outgoing, kind, and sociable, and sometimes introvert, cautious and conservative.
- Some of your wishes are often unrealistic.
- One of the main goals of your life is safety.
Fowler found that the average rating given by the students was 4.26, indicating that most of them believed that the report reflected their personality very accurately. After the score was submitted, Fowler told the students that the reports they received were exactly the same and that he extracted them from a certain astrology book.
What is the impact of the Barnum effect?
The Barnum effect can explain why many people believe in pseudosciences, such as astrology, divination, psychological tests, etc., because these methods use people’s psychological hints to provide people with some seemingly professional but actually ambiguous information. , make people feel that they are understood and paid attention to. The Barnum effect can also be used for marketing and advertising, by using common, positive, and attractive words to describe products or services, making consumers feel that these products or services are tailored for them, thus Increase their desire to buy.
The Barnum effect also has some negative effects, such as making people lack self-awareness and critical thinking, blindly accepting unreliable information and suggestions, thereby affecting their decisions and behaviors. For example, some people may give up some opportunities or make some wrong choices because they believe in horoscopes, some people may spend a lot of money or make some dangerous actions because they believe in fortune tellers, and some people may believe in psychological tests. Ignore your true feelings or change your personality.
PsycTest official website (psychtest.cn) provides a series of professional psychological tests to help people understand themselves more scientifically, rather than relying on vague astrology or psychological hints. For astrology and divination, you should pay attention to its ** scientific basis* and avoid believing information without empirical support. If you want to test whether you have an impulsive or rational personality, you can refer to the picture psychological test . For IQ IQ testing and logical reasoning ability challenges, you can refer to IQ IQ testing: a major challenge in logical reasoning ability .
How to avoid being affected by the Barnum effect?
To avoid being influenced by the Barnum effect, we need to cultivate our critical thinking and logical reasoning skills. We should not believe in some information and suggestions without scientific basis and evidence. We should learn to distinguish between true and false from good or bad, and have a clear understanding of ourselves. And objective understanding, don’t be confused by some vague and general descriptions. We can also test whether we are affected by the Barnum effect through the following methods:
- Consider the opposite: When we see some information that describes our personality or destiny, we can try to think about whether the opposite of this information can also apply to us, or whether it can apply to others. For example, ‘You really need other people to like and appreciate you’, can this sentence also be said to ‘You really don’t care about what others think of you’? Or can it also be said to be ‘You really hate what others say about you’? If the answer is yes, then this sentence is a typical Barnum statement and nothing special.
- Compare frequency: When we see some information that describes our personality or destiny, we can try to estimate the frequency or probability of this information appearing. For example, ‘You are sometimes extroverted, kind, and sociable, and sometimes introverted, cautious, and conservative.’ How many people do this sentence appear? Do many people have such characteristics? If the answer is yes, then this sentence is a typical Barnum statement and nothing special.
- Request Specific: When we see some information that describes our personality or destiny, we can try to request more specific and detailed information from the source that provides this information. For example, ‘You have considerable unexplored potential but have not yet developed your strengths.’ This sentence sounds encouraging, but what kind of potential is it? Can some examples or evidence be used to illustrate it? If the answer is no, then this sentence is a typical Barnum statement and nothing special.
Summarize
The Barnum effect is a common psychological phenomenon, and people are prone to think that vague and general character descriptions are tailored for themselves. This effect is widely used in the fields of ** constellation, divination, psychological testing, marketing, etc., and affects people’s decision-making and cognition. To avoid being influenced by the Barnum effect, we need to cultivate critical thinking, conduct comparative experiments, question information sources, and pay attention to specific data and logic. In addition, if you want to truly understand your psychological traits, you can pass scientific psychological tests, such as decision-making ability tests , to avoid being misled by vague descriptions.
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