Chances are that at one point, you’ve read some sort of personality test or a description of your zodiac sign and thought, “That is so me.” Maybe you got a reading done by a psychic or cracked open a fortune cookie that read "You have so many talents but are not taking advantage of them" and felt downright astonished. You totally have talents and you totally aren’t using them! How did they know?!
While Libras are supposed to be the most gullible of all of the signs, the truth is that we’ve all fallen victim to simple science — psychology, to be more specific. The Barnum Effect, named after P.T. Barnum; businessman, founder of the famed Barnum & Bailey Circus, and coiner of the phrase “There’s a sucker born every minute,” states that individuals give high accuracy ratings to intentionally devised vague statements since they view these statements as unique to themselves and their personalities.
So, great news to all the Libras out there: you aren’t the only suckers around.
But back to Mr. Barnum; if you felt the cold derision saturated in that statement noted above, you’re right. The guy totally laughed his way to the bank, and all at the expense of the suckers that paid to see his shoddy shticks and the victims of the circus acts themselves. He was a real master of the art of persuasion and took full advantage of advertisements. He used phrases such as “The greatest natural & national curiosity in the world” to describe his inhumane Joice Heth exhibit and posed an elderly black woman as the 161-year-old former nurse of George Washington. It was these generalized untruths that motivated psychologists to entitle the Barnum Effect after him.
As a funny side note, though: Cancers, one of which Mr. Barnum is, are supposedly pretty good at emotional manipulation. Go figure. But, then again, astrology.com also says that Cancers are very domestic, nurturing, and emotional as well. I’m not sure if Mr. Barnum exactly falls under that description.
Anyway, the Barnum Effect wasn't popularized until American psychologist Bertram R. Forer published the results of his experiment entitled “The Fallacy of Personal Validation” in 1948. He gave a personality test to a number of his students and told them to rate the personality analysis before them a number between one and five. The analysis was the same piece from an astrology column from the local newspaper. At the end of the experiment, the average score from the students was 4.26, which proves that the vague statements we find in astrology columns and other pseudo-science works can apply to just about anyone out there.
Not to put a damper on anyone’s fun since, personally, I love to hear all about what kind of food I am as a Sagittarius and what sort of student I am as an INTJ personality type, but it’s still important to be knowledgeable about the Barnum Effect. No one’s a sucker if you’re smart about it — even you Libras out there.
