Barnum effect can be described as the widespread tendency for people to accept personality feedback provided to them as accurate, even when the feedback itself is quite general and vague.  Back in 1985, Dickson & Kelly administered a personality test to a group of students and then provided each participant with a personality profile that presumably described them. Yet vast majority of students rated the feedback as either a good or excellent description of their personality.See, this is the main reason why I tried to stay away from all those facebook personality quiz, considering they have absolutely no scientific backings; and of course it also concerns the facebook privacy policies, which is undoubtedly foolish.

Not only with personality profile, Barnum effects also describes the tendency for people to accept astrological predictions, palm readings, crystal ball gazing and so on.

Good, next time when you see a friend saying “Amazing test! So true!”, explain to him what is Barnum effect.

Just like many other psyco classes that I’ve taken in the past two years, we have to go through this chapter of research methods. Of courses I picked up a few new points each time we are doing it. Anyways, moving on…

Since most of the psychology experiments are conducted with university students, it had been argued how well can their results being replicated and generalized to the public population. Here is one actual paper from my personality class that evidently pointing out university student’s major difference.

Sears (1986): University students differ from the general population, because they:

1) Are pre-selected for compliance with authority figures

2) Have elevated Cognitive skills

3) Are egocentric in their self-reports

4) Have a sense of self that has not been fully crystallized

5) Have a personality is till evolving and not fully developed.

Something to take about.