What is Barnum Effect?

A shorter description would be; people relate themselves with statements that could apply to many people.

History

The Barnum Effect is named after Phineas Taylor Barnum, who was a circus showman. During his performances, he was using such vague statements to catch the attention of the audience, and he made them believe him as he knew specifics of their lives. He was known as a person who knew something about everybody.

The naming of the psychological phenomenon may have been attributed to Barnum by Paul Meehl, an American psychologist.

Barnum Effect is also known as the Forer Effect because Bertram Forer, an American psychologist, first documented it as part of a classroom experiment.

During his experiment, his students were given a personality test. Instead of individual assessment, Forer handed out the same assessment to all his students. The evaluation included statements like these:

• You have a great need for other people to like and admire you
• You tend to be critical of yourself
• You have a great deal of unused capacity, which you have not turned to your advantage

When the students were asked to grade his assessments, the average grade was 4.26 out of 5. The similar experiments were conducted many times since Forer’s initial trial, and the average remains around 4.2.

Why does it work?

Because of the personal validation effect in which people
interpret their own meanings in vague statements. People make general statements personalized by using the coincidences between statements and in their personal lives and make themselves to perceive a validation. We tend to scan the data and look for patterns and meanings in them. Then, we make assumptions based on our instinct.

In cases in which the statement includes the person’s name, the acceptance ratios maybe even higher. In the cases that the subject trusts and believes the evaluator’s authority, the acceptance may be even higher.

It is also expected that while people accept vague positive statements, they tend to reject the negative ones. This may be so that people want to think that they have so-called good to have characteristics. People also tend to overestimate the possibility of having a better life than others. However, it may of course also work because these vague statements are in fact true for most of the people.

It is reported that the Barnum Effect is universal, so there is no effect of gender, age, culture, and ethnicity.

Examples

There are many examples of the use of the Barnum Effect in real life. Astrologers, palm readers, fortune-tellers, and psychics all use vague statements so that there is a higher probability for at least one person will find something that may be perfectly suitable to them.

There are some essential criteria to create a Barnum statement. They need to be

• positive, and complementary so that it is easier to accept
• generic so that applicable to many

Some examples:

• You had an accident when you were a child that traumatized you
• You love your spouse, and you have a healthy relationship
• You have a great need for other people to like and admire you
• You tend 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
• 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
• Some of your aspirations tend to be unrealistic
• Security is one of your primary goals in life

The most common statements may include the phrase “at times.” Some examples:

• At times you feel very sure of yourself, while at other times, you are not as confident
• At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing
• At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times, you are introverted, wary, reserved

Daily horoscopes are published on tabloids and websites are a by-product of astrology. Astrology is widely accepted as pseudoscience by scientists. Astrologers who write the daily horoscopes would not use precise statements on their predictions because they can be quickly falsified. So, they use various forms of Barnum statements. Hence, people believe in horoscope descriptions because they are very generic.

Fortune tellers also use Barnum statements that could apply to almost anyone.

Psychics claim to have supernatural powers often trick people by using Barnum statements. They usually refer to a spirit as the source of their Barnum statements. Often, they even make listeners believe that spirits are someone the listener once knew. However, cold reading is the most common method that psychics use to acquire a lot of information and create a brief persona profile of the listeners. They do this by merely analyzing the listener’s body language, manner of speech, ethnicity, sexual orientation, hairstyle, gender, fashion, and such. Then, psychics personalize their Barnum statements to make listeners believe even more. Cold reading does not work only because of the talent of the person who performs it. It is mainly because of people’s eagerness to connect what is asked and told and what is going on or what happened in their own lives. This is again occurring because of the power of personal validation.

Personality tests

One of the most common places where one can find various Barnum statements are personality tests. Today most of the personality tests have a form of the original statements which were used by Prof. Forer.

Here are two examples of personality tests that you can try:

• https://www.outofservice.com/bigfive/
• https://www.sapa-project.org/

Barnum effect in action

Watch the video to show an experiment conducted by Derren Brown.

Summary

We need to remember that self-validation is not a validation. We should not be tricked by fraudulent artists such as psychics, astrologers, and others with their Barnum statements. We also need to remember that they want us to believe in their positive, complementary Barnum statements. However, now we know that they are not explicitly written for us, and most of us can relate ourselves to them.

Other effects in psychology

Barnum Effect is not the only psychological phenomenon. There are various other. Without describing them, here is a list of other effects in psychology.

• IKEA Effect
• Bystander Effect
• Online Disinhibition Effect
• Focusing Effect
• Cocktail Effect
• Halo Effect
• Zeigarnik Effect
• Endowed Progress Effect
• Near Miss Effect

References

• Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., & Swann, W. B., Jr. (2003). A Very Brief Measure of the Big Five Personality Domains. Journal of Research in Personality, 37
• Fichten, C. S., Sunerton, B. Popular horoscopes and the “Barnum effect.” Journal of Psychology, 1983, 114
• Forer, B. R. The fallacy of personal validation: A classroom demonstration of gullibility. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1949, 44
• Christopher Orpen & Anne Jamotte (1975) The Acceptance of Generalized Personality Interpretations, The Journal of Social Psychology, 96:1
• Stagner, R. (1958). The gullibility of personnel managers. Personnel Psychology, 11
• Sugawara, S. K., Tanaka, S., Okazaki, S., Watanabe, K., & Sadato, N. (2012). Social Rewards Enhance Offline Improvements in Motor Skill. PloS one, 7(11)
• Initially published on https://www.murat.fi/science/psychology/barnum-effect/