The Facts on The Barnum Effect

Oct 3

In 1947, psychologist Ross Stangler, whose work focused on personality, had a group of managers take a personality test. After everyone turned in their test, Stangler was able to give them all scientifically proven personality traits. Next, the managers had to decide how accurate they felt the traits were. None described the results as wrong.

The interesting thing is that Stangler’s “scientifically proven personality traits” were all bullshit. He made them all up and didn’t even bother looking at the personality test he gave the managers. But, how did none of the managers disagree with the results if they were all lies?

The Forer Effect

A year later, psychologist and professor Bertram Forer gave 39 students in his psychology class a similar personality test. He told them he would give each of them an individualized personality trait list based on their answers a week later.

You might have guessed this already but for that week, Forer basically kicked up his feet and twiddled his thumbs because he was about to lie his ass off.

A week later he gave each student a personalized list of traits and told them to rate it on a scale from 0-5. What each student didn’t know was that the personalized list they all received wasn’t personalized at all, they each received this exact same list:

You have a great need for other people to like and admire you.
You have a tendency to be critical of yourself.
You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage.
While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them.
Your sexual adjustment has presented problems for you.
Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure 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 pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others' statements without satisfactory proof.
You have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others.
At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, reserved.
Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic.
Security is one of your major goals in life.
You’re extremely gullible

I made that last one up but it fits though. Incredibly the students rated their supposed personalized list of traits as a 4.3 in terms of accuracy.

Forer and Stangler realized that people will believe generalized statements are true about their own personalities, especially when they’ve been told the statements have been tailored to them. The effect works even better when the statements are positive.

For example, you can tell someone that their horoscope says “you’re a good person and make positive decisions when times are tough” and they will believe it specifically about themselves, even if they’re currently in jail for murder.

Barnum Effect

The effect Stangler and Forer observed had been known as the Forer effect until 1956 when psychologist Paul Meehl wrote an angry essay called “Wanted - A Good Cookbook”. How do I know he was angry?

Well, because in the essay he used 5 exclamations points, and when it comes to scientific papers, you don’t use exclamations points unless you're serious. Also, he apparently doesn’t believe in line or paragraph breaks.

Barnum Effect facts — Reading this was like torture… it was 13 pages

At the time Meehl was witnessing a rise in the use of tests to figure out the personalities of patients despite the test results being based on the population as a whole. He saw them as a waste of time and gives the example of a test “discovering” that a known psychiatric patient has trouble relating emotionally to others.

After describing the same phenomenon as Stangler and Forer, he pleaded that everyone would call it the Barnum Effect to stigmatize the results of such tests and hopefully prevent the scientific community from using them. By this time, Barnum hadn’t been Disney-fied and he was still seen as a hoaxer and hack… so the name fits.

Who's Using The Barnum Effect?

While the use of generalized personality tests with generalized results by the scientific community is pretty rare these days, the Barnum effect is still extremely prevalent in the rest of society. I mentioned horoscopes earlier because it’s one of the biggest examples of the Barnum effect in action.

Find someone you know (or don’t know, I don’t tell you how to choose your victims), ask them what their sign is, and tell them this is their specific horoscope for today:

When you work really long and hard for something, you run the risk of being too exhausted to enjoy it once you finish! You need to work on balancing your energy today. Don't jump at every opportunity that arrives on your doorstep. You need to accept things you can handle, and avoid anything that puts too much pressure on you. Only take on what you can manage. That way, when you've reached the top of the mountain, you'll have tons of time and energy to enjoy the view.

Ask them if they think it makes sense for them and if they say yes, then let them know they just fell for the Barnum effect because this horoscope is for a Leo and it’s from March 17th, 2015.

Take a look at how generalized those statements are. The very first sentence could apply to literally anyone, so could the second, and third, and fourth... You get the point. But horoscopes aren’t the only example.

Any personality test that attempts to fit you into one of a few select personalities is just leading down the path of the Barnum Effect. Yes, this includes the pretty popular Myers-Briggs test. Take the Myers-Briggs test twice, six weeks apart and you might end up with two wildly different answers, you might as well just take a Buzzfeed quiz.

Are you kidding me?! I’m clearly a Chandler!

The worst offenders using the Barnum effect to get your hard-earned money are so-called psychics. If you ever find yourself in a group with a “psychic” listen carefully to what they’re saying, you’ll find they’re asking leading questions or making broad generalized statements.

Many people who leave a psychic will often fall into another bias known as confirmation bias where they’ll only remember, or put more emphasis on, what the psychic got “right”. This will lead them to believe the psychic can really tell the future instead of just realizing they made some good guesses.

Remember, psychics have been doing this for years and are really good at picking up small cues in body language that will lead them to make somewhat accurate guesses, it’s a process known as cold reading.

So pay close attention to the things people are telling you about yourself, especially if they supposedly get it from a test, Tarot cards, or ghosts.

Quick Facts

A lot of sources claim Paul Meehl named the phenomenon, “Barnum Effect” due to the misattributed P.T Barnum quote, “There’s a sucker born every minute” but nowhere in his writings does Meehl say that’s the reason.
He actually writes that the idea for the name came from one of his colleagues, Donald G. Paterson who called the test results a “personality description after the manner of P.T. Barnum”