#26 Barnum Effect: Why smart people believe ridiculous things

Do you generally feel like you’ve got your life together, but sometimes wonder what the hell you’re doing? In this episode, Mel and Dan explore the Barnum effect and why 'clairvoyant' could still be a promising career choice.


Mel:    00:18   Hi, and welcome to Bad Decisions.

Dan:    00:20   The show that helps us understand why we choose what we choose.

Mel:    00:22   Why we think, what we think.

Dan:    00:24   And how to exploit this stuff for fun and commercial gain. That's Dr. Mel Weinberg. She is a performance psychologist.

Mel:    00:29   And that's Dan Monheit, co-founder of Hardhat, and this is Kops. [music]

Dan:    00:42   All right, Mel. Riddle me this.

Mel:    00:44   Yes.

Dan:    00:44   I am very, very lucky, fortunate, even "#blessed" some would say, to spend a pretty good portion of my day with pretty smart people.

Mel:    00:51   Lucky you.

Dan:    00:52   I know. It's pretty good.

Mel:    00:54   Wish it were like that for me! I'm kidding, I'm kidding all the people I work with. Love you all!

Dan:    00:57   Geez. And that's all we have time for today. Anyway, one of the things that I honestly just cannot wrap my little head around is how seemingly ... not even seemingly. Actually really intelligent people still in 2019, almost 2020, put any weight or validity in what things like horoscopes say about them. Or that do shit, and then say, "Oh yeah, but sorry. I'm a Virgo. What do you want from me?" No offence Virgos - I don't even know what it means.

Mel:    01:22   I'm a Virgo.

Dan:    01:22   You're a Virgo?

Mel:    01:22   That's awkward.

Dan:    01:25   That explains a lot. It explains nothing!

Mel:    01:28   So basically you're saying you can't believe that people can still be so stupid sometimes. Smart people can be so stupid sometimes. Is that what you're saying?

Dan:    01:36   They're not my words, but let's say that's an easy conclusion to draw from what I've just described.

Mel:    01:40   Dan, what if I told you that there was a heuristic that could explain it?

Dan:    01:43   Surely not.

Mel:    01:44   Come on, there is.

Dan:    01:45   Surely not all of our stupidity is explained by psychological heuristics.

Mel:    01:48   Given we're in front of the microphone, I feel like we should talk about it today.

Dan:    01:52   The timing could not have been better.

Mel:    01:54   In that case, let me introduce you and all of our listeners to the Forer Effect.

Dan:    01:59   The Forer Effect.

Dan:    02:07   Could you spell that for me?

Mel:    02:10   F-O-R-E-R, named after Bertram Forer.

Dan:    02:10   Bertie.

Mel:    02:12   Old Bertie. In 1949 and the Forer Effect described the tendency for people to accept vague, ambiguous, general statements as descriptors of their unique personalities. Would you believe?

Dan:    02:27   Awesome. That is totally a thing.

Mel:    02:30   Here's what Forer did in his classic experiment of 1949. I mean, if it's okay for me to indulgence in some research?

Dan:    02:36   Yeah, please.

Mel:    02:36   Can I have some research music? [music]

Dan:    02:44   Such a Virgo. Anyway..

Mel:    02:48   What Forer did in his classic psychological experiment, was he asked his students ... I think there were 39 of them. In 1949, that's a decent class size. He asked them to take a personality test. They all took what they believed to be a personality test that was designed by their instructor, Bertie Forer. Then he said a week later when you come back for the next class, you're all going to be given a paragraph or a list of statements that describes your personality. They all thought, "All right, this is cool. I'm getting my own set of results. Awesome." So next week they all come to class and professor Forer hands around the results to each individual. Here's what they receive: "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. Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside."

Dan:    03:52   Oh Bertie. You know me so well!

Mel:    03:53   Now look, these are just five of the 13 statements that were given. But as you might've guessed, each student was actually given the exact same report.

Dan:    04:01   No, surely not.

Mel:    04:02   Yep.

Dan:    04:02   Each student was given the exact same unique individual personalised result?

Mel:    04:06   But here's the cool bit. So they all read them and professor Forer, or Bertie, as you seem to like to call him.

Dan:    04:13   I only called him that once, you seem to like calling him that. Such a Virgo.

Mel:    04:16   He says to them all, "Hey guys, just before we finish up, like would you mind giving me a rating of how accurate you think this description is of you?"

Dan:    04:27   How accurate is this description that says I'm pretty much awesome. I would say very accurate.

Mel:    04:30   Of course, they all rated that this was a highly accurate description of themselves. Then he revealed the deception and said, "Ha ha, suckers. You've all got the same thing." And they never came to class again... But this is what Forer did. The Forer Effect, as it was known at the time, described how people will just take anything that is positive about themselves.

Dan:    04:54   Right.

Mel:    04:54   Then a few years later in 1956, a Paul Meehl, who's pretty cool and his writing is quite funny and a little bit satirical for somebody who writes about some serious psychological stuff. If you're interested, good read.

Dan:    05:06   Like an early Dr. Weinberg, yeah?

Mel:    05:06   Oh geez, wow. That's so positive and complimentary. Wow. That applies to me.

Dan:    05:16   I'm an Aries.

Mel:    05:16   Meehl wrote a follow-up paper on it. He thought that rather than giving Bertie Forer the credit for the effect, that it should actually be termed the Barnum effect.

Dan:    05:26   What?

Mel:    05:27   Yes, the idea was reminiscent to him of P.T. Barnum who people might know from the Greatest Showman.

Dan:    05:33   Circus dude?

Mel:    05:34   Yeah. So he was a circus owner and his whole formula for success was this idea that his circus has a little something for everybody. So sort of universally applicable to everybody.

Dan:    05:43   Oh my God. So basically he like took some liquid paper, for those of you listeners old enough to know what that is, and just whited out Forer and put it in Barnum. And that's it. Everybody knows about this as the Barnum Effect.

Mel:    05:54   He actually just said in he's 1956 paper, like, "I suggest that going forward we call this the Barnum effect."

Dan:    05:59   That is so outrageously disrespectful.

Mel:    06:02   Now it is referred to as the Barnum Effect.

Dan:    06:04   Oh my God.

Mel:    06:05   The sorts of statements that he used to illustrate the Barnum Effect are referred to as Barnum statements.

Dan:    06:10   I just loved that if this happened in Australia, he'd be the Johnny Barnum. It'd be the Johnny Barnum effect.

Mel:    06:21   I love it that this is in the context of us talking about how really smart people can say really dumb things.

Dan:    06:23   What do you mean? People love Johnny Farnham.

Mel:    06:27   Johnny Barnum?

Dan:    06:28   Also. It's like a more positive introspective version of John Farnham. Maybe I really am the voice?

Mel:    06:35   Anyway. We digress. These Barnum statements, things that are typically used in all sorts of ways to basically fool people.

Dan:    06:45   Right. It's basically that you tell somebody something that sounds like it's profound and personalised.

Mel:    06:49   Yeah.

Dan:    06:49   But actually it just applies to everyone.

Mel:    06:52   Yeah.

Dan:    06:53   I could totally do these. Do you want to try? This is like what crystal ball people and stuff do.

Mel:    06:58   Exactly.

Dan:    06:59   All right, we're going to do this. I'm going to have a crack at 2019, almost 2020, Barnum statements.

Mel:    07:05   Go on, this should be fun.

Dan:    07:07   I can't just do it, I need your palm, please. Whoa. Wow. That is interesting. The first thing that I can tell here: do you sometimes feel that your barista is judging you when you order coffee in the morning?

Mel:    07:25   Yeah.

Dan:    07:26   Do you feel that if you really look deep down inside, you know you should probably be plant based but can't quite commit to that at this stage of your life?

Mel:    07:34   A little bit.

Dan:    07:35   Do you sometimes feel like you might have something stuck in your teeth especially after eating meals containing quinoa?

Mel:    07:39   All the time.

Dan:    07:41   Do you ever find yourself looking at things on the internet when you know you actually should just be doing work?

Mel:    07:46   Guilty.

Dan:    07:47   Yeah. Do you ever feel that you wear too much black? No?

Mel:    07:51   Sometimes.

Dan:    07:51   Sometimes, but other times you don't.

Mel:    07:53   Sometimes you just feel like wearing black, right?

Dan:    07:56   I know it happens, but sometimes you wonder why you feel like that, right?

Mel:    07:58   Yeah.

Dan:    07:58   Yeah, I think I could do this. I think I can be a fortune teller. Your barista is definitely judging you, by the way.

Mel:    08:05   To make affective Barnum statements, you basically have to be as bored as possible. There are key ways to do this. Like writing, "at times" at the start of a statement.

Dan:    08:14   Yeah, that makes sense.

Mel:    08:15   Or couching something negative within a positive. So like while you mostly do this, you'll sometimes do this.

Dan:    08:21   The "at times" thing makes sense, right? Because really everyone is everything some time. In the right circumstances everybody feels self-conscious, everybody feels confident, everybody feels quiet, everybody feels gregarious.

Mel:    08:33   Yeah, in different contexts. We all have different versions of ourselves that come out.

Dan:    08:35   At times you feel unsure of whether you've actually taken the right steps in life. Like at times, yeah, but not usually!

Mel:    08:40   Who doesn't? Typically people will look at this and go, "Yeah, this is horoscopes." Which it is. Interestingly, there was a study in 1971 by Silverman on this idea-

Dan:    08:53   Is 1971 the golden age for horoscopes? I feel like people would have been very open minded to such things then.

Mel:    08:58   Yeah. Sounds right. Yeah, we'll go with that. So here's what he did in his experiment to test the Barnum Effect/the OG Forer Effect.

Dan:    09:03   Would you please just have some respect. Won't anybody think of Forer, please?!

Mel:    09:10   What Silverman did was he had 12 personality sketches. Which might be like what you would find in the back pages of the Herald sun. Do they still do that?

Dan:    09:17   I don't know. A personality sketch is not like a drawing.

Mel:    09:21   No, like a vignette. They gave people the option to read through them and say, "Look, which one of these sounds most like you?" They were just numbered one through 12. People would pick the one that was most relevant to them, that they felt best described them. But then there was another group of people who were given the same vignettes, if you will, but this time they were each labeled with one of the star signs. Of course, it just so happened that people tended to default to pick the one that was their aligned star sign.

Dan:    09:57   The description of me under the title of me seems to match me.

Mel:    10:00   Sounds more like you.

Dan:    10:01   Than the other possible descriptions of me that are assigned to people not like me.

Mel:    10:06   People are really gullible and that's what really the Barnum Effect does. It just plays on people's gullibility.

Dan:    10:12   You're gullible, yes. But I mean it seems like we're especially gullible or especially want to believe nice things about ourselves. Because your alternative to being gullible is to be realistic and say, "No, I'm actually not generous at all. I hate people."

Mel:    10:27   Yeah, and I'm an awful person.

Dan:    10:28   Yeah, I'm terrible. I don't even like me!

Mel:    10:31   And that's what this is all about. It's about your personal validation, right? Feeling personally validated and feeling like you are understood. That your thoughts and emotions are accepted by other people and that's something from an ego perspective that is really important to us and to our development and to our sense of who we are.

Dan:    10:46   We are all so fragile.

Mel:    10:47   Aren't we?

Dan:    10:47   Looking for validation on the back page of the Herald Sun. Hey if that's where you've got to go. That's fine. You do it.

Mel:    10:53   That's what it takes. So here's the thing, there are three factors that can influence whether or not the Barnum Effect is going to be in play and whether people are going to fall victim to it.

Dan:    11:04   If you're a shyster and you really want to be getting one over on people, these are three things you have to do really well to make sure it works.

Mel:    11:10   Here's how you really take advantage of people's gullibility by Dan and Mel.

Dan:    11:13   Oh God. Normally I don't feel awkward about this. You seem really into this. I feel kind of awkward.

Mel:    11:20   Yeah, okay.

Dan:    11:21   Ethically.

Mel:    11:22   Who's wearing the ethical hat now?

Dan:    11:22   Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do it.

Mel:    11:27   If people are going to fall victim to this, if people are dumb enough, like we sort of said at the start-

Dan:    11:29   No, you said at the start.

Mel:    11:31   Then that's on them. That's on them!

Dan:    11:32   They're not dumb, they're just victims of the Barnum Effect. Did you know sometimes some really, really intelligent people ... in fact, often very intelligent people can feel victim to the Barnum Effect? Especially if they're also generous.

Mel:    11:41   Is that what you've learned?

Dan:    11:42   I've learned that today. All right, give me the magic three.

Mel:    11:46   The first thing is the more that you believe that the statement applies only to you, the more likely you're going to fall for it. There's magic words like "for you" which you'll see put out there, which just play on people's gullibility.

Dan:    12:02   Spotify do a wonderful job of this. "Your daily playlist". We made this just for you. Like somebody who's been up all night basically listening to the whole internet. They've picked the 30 best tracks, put them together, your name is on it. Go and enjoy.

Mel:    12:15   Wow.

Dan:    12:17   Netflix kind of do this as well with your personalised recommendations. Which usually, just because one of my kids watch something that I really have no interest in. But they're trying, I appreciate that they're trying.

Mel:    12:21   They're trying, that's all they can. The next factor that influences is how much you believe in the authority of the person conducting the evaluation. In Forer's study all of his students believe that he professor Forer like, he's hot shit. He's good at this and he knows. So what he says must be true.

Dan:    12:40   Right. This manifests everywhere. If I think about fortune tellers and those people who really kind of ham it up and try and look mystical and special because that adds some authority to them and makes you want to believe. I don't know if it has anything to do with it, but I find it weird that when you go to the chemist or the pharmacy that the person who is like dispensing drugs to you. Just for you, drugs just for you is like elevated on a platform. Must you be on a stage? There's no other retail environment that I go into where the person serving me is on a stage. I'm very unlikely to question them.

Mel:    13:18   Yeah, so you believe that they are a figure who is worthy of being able to dispense those drugs particularly for you. I'm sure there's nobody else in the world who takes these drugs.

Dan:    13:25   No, I mean those anti-histamines. Which has come down from the stage to me, I couldn't challenge it.

Mel:    13:30   It's like it come down from God himself!

Dan:    13:31   I know, from God through my pharmacists, to me. I also think it's really interesting- when you go into a Footlocker store, all the employees there wear polo shirts that make them look like basketball referees.

Mel:    13:47   Yep.

Dan:    13:47   The black and white stripes. Everyone's just used to it. But it's kind of weird. Like why would you just your staff like a referee? But it's kind of this idea that Footlocker is a multi brand store. There's Nike and Adidas, and everything else in there. You feel like the person serving you is a neutral and an authority.

Mel:    14:02   Supposed to be, yeah.

Dan:    14:04   They're neutral and they're an authority. They are basically going to give you the best decision that is right for you, what you need from your footwear in this instance. Well-played Footlocker. We had personalisation, just for you, we had authority.

Mel:    14:17   Yeah, and I mean I'm Dr Mel so obviously everything that I say.

Dan:    14:20   Yeah, absolutely.

Mel:    14:20   Because people believe in my authority. It's true and it's all relevant to every single one of you out there.

Dan:    14:25   It's true.

Mel:    14:26   The last one, is that it should be mainly positive. Because what we talked about before, our ego likes to be flattered, and that gets you a long way. So mainly positive traits that we talk about and sort of in a general ambiguous way. If we have some mostly positive traits, then we're able to tolerate some negative ones within that. It's like "You're mostly generous and amazing, but can be a little bit selfish." "Ah, yeah. Okay. I'll own up to that."

Dan:    14:48   That thing what you just did is actually called rainbow rusing, where it's like-

Mel:    14:51   Oh, excuse me?

Dan:    14:53   I know, I know. It's like a real straight scammer stuff. But it's like where you give people a personality attribute. What's the thing you just said?

Mel:    15:00   Well, I said you like you're really generous and awesome, but can be selfish at times.

Dan:    15:03   Yeah. So you give people an attribute like, you're really generous and awesome. But then you also give them the exact opposite of that. But sometimes you're this. "You're really, really outgoing, you like making new friends, but sometimes you just want to be by yourself." It's like everybody can subscribe to that.

Mel:    15:18   Everybody fits into that.

Dan:    15:19   But as long as it's overridingly positive that makes sense. I guess where we see this everywhere is in things like product descriptions. I always find it's weird that all moisturisers are for people with sensitive skin. Like is there anybody going, "No, my skin is just hard as fuck. I don't need your sensitive moisturiser. I can handle it."

Mel:    15:36   I just want to be treated gently though.

Dan:    15:37   I mean that's what everybody says. I think the athletic apparel categories are really interesting place for this, as well. If you look at, I don't know, like a long sleeve t-shirts for running in winter. Obviously you're wearing a long sleeve in winter. Its like "This is a garment for people who know that bad weather is no obstacle for a good training program." Or people who know that pain is just weakness leaving the body. It's like, "That is totally me. I am that runner. I know the bad weather is no excuse for a good training program. That top has clearly been made for me."

Mel:    16:08   Yeah. We see the Barnum Effect coming to play in all sorts of different circumstances. One of them, like with horoscopes like a part of it is just for entertainment value. Have you ever done those tests online? The which personality type are you? Or which Harry Potter character are you? Have you ever done those?

Dan:    16:26   Yeah. Not the Harry Potter one. Actually I haven't seen Harry Potter. So I figure unless I got Harry I would not even know who it was. Could I be Harry?

Mel:    16:32   But I imagine that most people listening would be familiar with the sort of tests that we're talking about.

Dan:    16:36   Yeah, I'm going to keep doing the test until I get the person that I want.

Mel:    16:39   Well you can because most of the time you'll score something different on these tests every time you do them. Which is testament to the point I'm about to make, about the validity or lack thereof.

Dan:    16:47   No, surely the which Harry Potter character are you is not invalid from a psychologist perspective.

Mel:    16:52   I'm not going to go into it.

Dan:    16:54   Don't wave that doctor card around like that.

Mel:    16:55   I'm not going to go into it.

Dan:    16:55   Those tests are highly researched!

Mel:    16:58   People will sometimes pay a lot of money for these sorts of tests. Like people might be familiar with the Myers Briggs inventory, which is promoted as a psychological assessment or a common personality assessment used often in hiring, recruiting, these sorts of things. But basically what it does, is it asks people some questions and then puts them into one of 16 categories and gives you a code for that. For example, you might be an INTJ or you might be an ESFP. This four letter code, that's yours. And you just happen to share it with a lot of other people. But there are 15 other different types. You feel special enough to feel that it's your category. But also different enough to everybody else. Because there are so many different options.

Mel:    17:40   It's commonly believed that the Myers Briggs test is helpful or useful in some regard. In reality, and without going into too much detail, it's not that much different to a horoscope. But people tend to believe it and people will identify very strongly with their result on the Myers Briggs.

Dan:    17:57   Wow. Gloves off!

Mel:    17:58   There's lots that you can read about if you're interested. But it does speak to just because there is a personality test out there and the Myers Briggs is known to not be ... just in defence of all psychologists out there, the Myers Briggs was not developed by psychologists. When we're talking about measuring personality, there are a lot of different tests that we use. Their aim is typically to discriminate between people and to recognise individual differences rather than chucking people into groups. Which I'm personally not a fan of. But that's my little rant over.

Dan:    18:26   So are we meant to discriminate more, or not discriminate more?

Mel:    18:28   Well, I'm just saying that it's the intention behind the test.

Dan:    18:31   Because I for one, am very anti discrimination. You should know.

Mel:    18:34   When I'm saying discriminate, I mean looking at understanding differences between people and that's what's key. Rather than looking at what's similar between people and chucking them into a group. Then giving them advice that they're all going to take as their own because they feel special.

Dan:    18:46   Right. Okay. So personality test are fine as long as they have been developed and issued by trained registered psychologists.

Mel:    18:51   Yeah. As an authority figure in the area-

Dan:    18:53   That is such a weird view for you to hold. So you, as a psychologist, think that personality tests developed by psychologists are superior to personality test developed by people who are not psychologists.

Mel:    19:03   Yes.

Dan:    19:04   It's so weird how even smart people are affected by it.

Mel:    19:06   Do you have anything else to say that would help us to finish off this episode?

Dan:    19:09   Yeah, yeah. You want to get out of here. Okay. Well I think the takeaways here from a marketing perspective are pretty straightforward. If you can wrap your product up in a way that is personalised and coming from a position of authority and is flattering for people - like this is a product for people who aspire for greatness, but you have to do it from a credible place - it's going to do well. And it's almost meaningless what thing you pick it as. Like I was imagining before if I was going to start a range of peanut butter. So get this, I could just say I have really good peanut butter, you should come and buy it. It's natural. But I could say, "Dan's peanut butter is made for choosy mums. Mums who know what's best for their kids. They want mealtime to be fun, great tasting and memorable."

Mel:    19:50   Well that's the sort of mum that I want to be. So I'm going to buy Dan's peanut butter.

Dan:    19:54   Yeah, but do you know what? I also have another product. Well, an alternative way that this could map out. Which is, "Dan's peanut butter made especially for choosy grandpa's. Grandpa's who know what's best for their grandkids. They want mealtime to be fun, great tasting and memorable."

Mel:    20:11   That's the kind of grandpa I want to be.

Dan:    20:11   Yeah, you see.

Mel:    20:12   Dan's peanut butter sounds amazing.

Dan:    20:13   It's crazy, it kind of doesn't matter, but as long as it's for someone. You just put it out there and let people connect themselves to it. If it's positive, people will. It's really going to stand out a lot more than something that doesn't offer such a thing.

Mel:    20:24   Yeah.

Dan:    20:24   The other thing I think about from a B2B sales perspective is one of the things I've learned over the years is that if we go in and meet a client and they sort of tell us all of their problems and what they're trying to achieve. If we can come back and articulate the problem or the opportunity in a really positive, flattering way better than anybody else, we are 90% there.

Mel:    20:46   Okay.

Dan:    20:46   If we can understand what the issue is ... "Really the problem here is that you have all of this greatness you just can't get out." But it has to feel real. It has to feel researched there actually has to be some greatness that you dig up from their past or their DNA. That is usually music to a prospective client ears. Because they can see the vision for that, they want to align with that and you're on your way.

Mel:    21:05   Yeah. I think from a personal perspective or from an individual perspective, this is about the need to feel validated. The need to feel validated by somebody who you think is important. But maybe if we can focus more on self validation or looking at who is important to us and looking at how we can get our validation needs met in other ways, then maybe we'll be less likely to be insecure. It's the insecurity that makes us more vulnerable to this Barnum Effect.

Dan:    21:30   Right. Well that's a nice feeling to end on. All right, so Barnum Effect ... actually Forer Effect. Yeah, I'm going to-

Mel:    21:37   I think it has been called the Barnum- Forer effect.

Dan:    21:40   Oh my God, that's just embarrassing.

Mel:    21:41   It's should be Forer- Barnum.

Dan:    21:43   Exactly. Anyway. All right. So the three core things, make it personalised, make it come from a position of authority, make it flattering. People will come along for the ride.

Mel:    21:52   You guys are awesome listeners. Every single one of you is actually really special to us and really fantastic.

Dan:    21:57   What I find actually is that it's only super intelligent people that enjoy the show. I'm just going to put that out there.

Mel:    22:03   Yeah.

Dan:    22:03   All right. Cool.

Mel:    22:04   The nicest people in the world.

Dan:    22:07   See you next time.

Mel:    22:07   Thanks guys.

Dan:    22:08   Peace out.