Barnum Effect

Barnum Effect

The finding that people tend to believe that a vague description✝ or prediction, offered for example by a character reader, applies specifically to themselves.

Actors show a willingness to accept the validity or accuracy of such overly inclusive and generic terms – common to people in general – despite little or no individualized information being yielded. Because Barnums are ‘one-size-fits-all’, and don’t provide information distinctive to one particular individual, they are not so much wrong as universal, elastic, and essentially useless.

PT Barnum once said that “I try to give a little something to everyone”. Barnum is also credited with “There’s a sucker born every minute” (though apparently this latter catch-phrase actually originated with a late-nineteenth century con-artist named Joseph Bessimer).

Psychologist BR Forer demonstrated the phenomenon experimentally in a 1949 classroom study in which a questionnaire was distributed to students for completion, telling the subjects that the results of this ‘test’ would give an accurate picture of each individual’s personality. Later, typed personality sketches were returned to the students, labelled at the top of the page with the names of the respective research participants, ostensibly based upon the ‘test’ responses. The respondents were then asked to rate how accurate the sketches were as a description of the students’ own individual personality; and also, how well the sketch would conform, if applied, to the “average” person. Invariably, the sketch is seen to be a quite accurate to very accurate depiction of each individual’s personality, while being considered a poor to very poor portrayal of the personality of the “average” person. No personality test was administered to the students: all were provided with the same personality sketch, differing only in the name marked at the top of each page. This tendency for people to accept vague, generalized (though not obviously so) accounts as highly self-descriptive turns up across a variety of clinical settings.

A type of Subjective Validation. Positive Barnums are called ‘Pollyannaǂ Principle’ statements.

Also known as the Forer Effect or the Fallacy of Personal Validation.

See Carroll for an extended discussion of the Barnum effect.

(see also: Cognitive Bias, Selective Exposure, Confirmation Bias, Belief Perseverance, Post Hoc Reasoning, Myside Bias, Neutral-evidence Principle)

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