If you have read a horoscope, had your fortune told, or cracked open a fortune cookie in a Chinese restaurant and thought, "That's so me", then you've experienced the Barnum Effect firsthand.
In this episode, we are going to look at this phenomenon in detail, explain how it works, and what you can do about it.
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about something called The Barnum Effect.
[00:00:27] You might not have heard of it before, but you have almost certainly experienced it.
[00:00:33] If you have read a horoscope, had your fortune told, or cracked open a fortune cookie in a Chinese restaurant, and thought, that is so me, then you have experienced the Barnum Effect firsthand.
[00:00:48] So, in this episode we are going to look at this in detail, explain how it works, and what you can do about it.
[00:00:56] OK then, The Barnum Effect.
[00:01:00] When I was growing up in the UK, every Saturday night on primetime TV there was a show called The National Lottery Live.
[00:01:11] Every week, millions of British people would play the National Lottery, choosing their lucky numbers, and on Saturday evening they would eagerly await to see whether their numbers had come up, whether they were going to be instantly turned into a millionaire.
[00:01:29] To add to the suspense, before the numbers were drawn, the camera would turn to a middle aged lady with jet black hair, her fringe cut short.
[00:01:42] Her name was “Mystic Meg”.
[00:01:45] She would often wear a purple, velvety coat, and hold a crystal ball in front of her.
[00:01:51] Behind her there was smoke, drawings of planets, and mysterious signs.
[00:01:58] She would look into her crystal ball, then directly at the camera, and in a soft and mysterious but assertive voice, announce what her crystal ball had told her about the people who would be winning the lottery that evening.
[00:02:15] Here’s a clip of her doing exactly that.
[00:02:19] Dreammaker planet Neptune and Venus spin fortunes for Scorpio and Capricorn and someone who bought a ticket at 6:00 PM today. The power of the pendulum is spelling out Pat and Cathy as winning names. And a woman wearing dark blue is serving drinks. A gray cat with golden eyes is close by. Insurance workers, bin men and a dentist will be celebrating too.
[00:03:05] So to recap, what did she say?
[00:03:09] It would be good news for Scorpio and Capricorn.
[00:03:13] Someone who bought a ticket at 6pm today will be a winner.
[00:03:17] People called Pat and Cathy will be lucky tonight..
[00:03:21] A woman wearing dark blue is serving drinks.
[00:03:24] A grey cat with golden eyes is close nearby.
[00:03:28] Insurance workers, bin men and a dentist will be celebrating too.
[00:03:34] And you heard the screams of celebration, as people heard the predictions of Mystic Meg and thought, hey, she is talking about me.
[00:03:44] Now, that clip was from October the 28th of 1995, and I cannot say with certainty that the big winner that evening was not a dentist called Pat who bought a ticket at 6pm with a grey cat with golden eyes.
[00:03:59] The point is, in all probability, one or several of those predictions probably could have been true for one of the winners. There are 12 star signs, and two were named. Pat and Cathy are both popular names, 6pm is a popular time to buy a ticket, a woman in dark blue serving drinks is a pretty common occurrence on a Saturday evening in the UK. There are lots of grey cats, and lots of insurance workers, bin men and dentists.
[00:04:31] And indeed, no doubt tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of people heard those predictions that evening and thought, it’s me, she is talking about me. Then the winning numbers were revealed and, uh oh, they didn’t win.
[00:04:48] This is a prime example of The Barnum Effect, which is, and I'm quoting directly, “the phenomenon that occurs when individuals believe that personality descriptions apply specifically to them, despite the fact that the description is actually filled with information that applies to everyone.” End quote.
[00:05:10] Despite the fact that we all kind of know that predictions like the ones Mystic Meg would make could apply to many people, they can be alluring, they can be attractive, we want to believe them. In the specific case of Mystic Meg, she was something of a national icon.
[00:05:29] She presented this fortune telling segment on the National Lottery Live programme from 1994 to 2000, and she had an astrology column in one of the country’s most read newspapers.
[00:05:42] Indeed, her popularity was such that she even entered the English language. When a politician or football manager or someone like that was asked to make a prediction about an election or a football match, they might respond “I’m not Mystic Meg”, as another way of saying “I don’t know and don't ask me about the future”.
[00:06:05] Now, you probably have similar people in your country, astrologers and predictors of the future. You might even believe them.
[00:06:14] A reported 29% of Americans believe in horoscopes and astrology, 23% of French people do, and 17% of Mexicans do.
[00:06:25] Clearly, for lots of people, perhaps even for you, it’s important.
[00:06:30] But it is a prime example of the so-called “Barnum Effect”, this idea that we think that a statement is about us, when in fact it could be about anyone.
[00:06:42] The term was named after a 19th century American businessman called P.T. Barnum, who ran a collection of circuses involving fortune tellers and mystics. Now, was he a deep believer in spirituality, horoscopes and the like? No. He was a capitalist, a businessman, and was reported to have said “a sucker is born every minute”.
[00:07:08] A sucker, by the way, is a gullible person, someone who is likely to believe anything that they are told.
[00:07:16] Clearly, Barnum wasn’t the first person to trick people out of their hard-earned money by pretending to be able to tell their fortunes or read their horoscopes. This is an industry as old as time.
[00:07:29] But the term “The Barnum Effect” was only coined relatively recently, in 1956, after there was an increasing amount of research done into this psychological effect.
[00:07:43] The research typically went something like this. A researcher would provide a group of people with a series of statements that they were told were specific to them, and then ask them to say how accurate they were.
[00:07:59] I’ll actually read you out one of the tests now, so you can experience this for yourself.
[00:08:05] You probably know the point I’m trying to make, but imagine for one moment that I have asked you to fill out a questionnaire where you need to answer questions about your personality. I tell you that I will examine your results and then provide you with my detailed analysis of your personality.
[00:08:25] So, here we go, here is my “expert” diagnosis of your personality:
[00:08:31] You have a great need for other people to like and admire you.
[00:08:36] You have a tendency to be critical of yourself.
[00:08:39] You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage.
[00:08:46] While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them.
[00:08:52] Your sexual adjustment has presented problems for you.
[00:08:57] Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside.
[00:09:04] At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.
[00:09:11] You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations.
[00:09:20] You pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof.
[00:09:28] You have found it unwise to be frank in revealing yourself to others.
[00:09:33] At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, reserved.
[00:09:43] Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic.
[00:09:47] Security is one of your major goals in life.
[00:09:52] OK, so those are the 13 character traits that the participants were given, and they were told that they were specifically about them, based on the answers they had provided.
[00:10:06] Then, the thirty-nine participants were asked to rank on a scale of 0 to 5 in terms of how accurate each statement was. 0 for completely wrong, 5 for exactly right.
[00:10:23] When the results were collected, the participants gave the statements an average of 4.3, they said that they were very accurate.
[00:10:34] This was the exact test that was conducted by an American psychologist called Bertram Forer, and indeed the Barnum Effect is sometimes called The Forer Effect.
[00:10:46] Forer would later reveal that every participant was given the same statements; the answers they had provided about their personality were not taken into consideration. And indeed, these “observations” about their personalities were taken from a book about astrology that he found in a nearby newsstand.
[00:11:09] He published this in a 1949 study, and the results were clear for all to see.
[00:11:16] Now, psychologists have made several observations about how this effect works, about why perfectly rational and intelligent people are likely to believe statements like this.
[00:11:30] Firstly, if the person believes that the analysis is only about them, that the predictions or statements are specific to them. Of course, if you think something is tailored to you, you are more likely to believe it.
[00:11:46] Secondly, if they believe that the person making the predictions is a person of authority. This can be because that person is a psychologist or it’s because that person has the authority of going on national TV every Saturday evening and being given a platform to predict the future.
[00:12:08] And thirdly, if the statements contain lots of positive character traits. Everyone is more likely to believe positive statements about them than negative statements, people naturally love praise and dislike criticism.
[00:12:24] It is a classic cognitive bias, a reality that we create for ourselves, despite the fact that when we analyse it in detail, we know it not to be true.
[00:12:37] Now, as a final point to add to this little exploration of The Barnum Effect and cognitive bias, it isn’t just Mystic Meg, astrologers and tarot card readers who take advantage of our cognitive biases to exploit us.
[00:12:53] It is also something that many technology companies use.
[00:12:57] If you use products like Spotify or Netflix, you will probably be recommended songs or movies “handpicked for you”. Sure, they do have all of your data about what you have listened to or watched before, but in all probability this recommendation is given to tens or hundreds of millions of people based on relatively broad demographic data; it’s not as personal as you might think it is.
[00:13:26] If Netflix says “ you might like this latest blockbuster film”, you might think “well, yes I might like that, how creepy”, but tens of millions of other people are getting exactly the same message.
[00:13:41] You see this with stuff you buy online as well.
[00:13:45] Sure, many companies will send you personalised advertising and emails after you “forget” to buy a specific pair of shoes on a website.
[00:13:54] But others will take advantage of this cognitive bias and show you supposedly “personalised” recommendations, but in fact they are recommendations that might apply to anyone.
[00:14:08] And to give you a specific language learning example of a cognitive bias, I’m sure you have seen many websites for English learning courses that ask you a series of questions that you read and think “of course, yes, that’s me”, that person is speaking to me and me alone.
[00:14:27] Questions like “Do you wish people didn’t ask you where you came from? Do you want never to be asked to repeat yourself? Would you like a perfect English accent?”
[00:14:37] Of course, almost everyone reading those questions would answer yes.
[00:14:43] And where you see the Barnum Effect in full swing is on websites or apps that ask you to input information about yourself so that you think that it is personalised, therefore you are more likely to take whatever action the app wants you to take.
[00:15:00] I actually tested this out on a few popular English apps, creating different accounts and providing completely different answers during the onboarding process, the sign up process, yet the experience afterwards was exactly the same. There is no need to personalise the experience if you already think that it is personalised.
[00:15:24] You might know that the most popular language learning app in the world, Duolingo, asks you to do things like select how often you want to learn when you sign up.
[00:15:34] It now uses this data to personalise your experience, but when it first launched this feature it didn’t. Still the team at Duolingo made an interesting observation. They ran a test and saw that people who set a goal and supposedly “personalised” their experience were more likely to come back to the app than those who weren’t asked to set a goal.
[00:16:01] Importantly, it didn’t initially adapt the user experience after sign up depending on the goal that had been set; it just analysed the data of people who had been asked to set a goal against those who hadn’t, and saw that even the simple factor of thinking that an experience is personalised to you was likely to increase engagement.
[00:16:23] So, in this case at least, the Barnum Effect isn’t always used for negative outcomes; it can push people into taking an action that they want to take anyway.
[00:16:35] That being said, it is powerful, and it’s something that we should at least be aware of.
[00:16:40] So, how can you avoid falling for the Barnum Effect, how can you beat this particular cognitive bias?
[00:16:49] Well, one way is to think about the three reasons that people tend to fall into the trap, and analyse the statement against each one.
[00:16:59] Is the statement really specific to you? If it’s a star sign, it is specific to 1/12 of the population. If it’s a generic statement, think about how many people it would apply to.
[00:17:12] Is the person making the statement a person of authority? Should you trust them? Have predictions they have made in the past come true? Or are they an octopus or someone who you have paid money to read your palm?
[00:17:28] And last but not least, what is actually being said? Are you being flattered? Is the statement positive or negative? If it’s positive, remember that you are more likely to believe that it applies to you.
[00:17:44] So, ask yourself these three questions, and you should be able to stop any potential Barnum Effect before it’s too late.
[00:17:52] But, even if you do fall for it, is it so harmful after all? Is there anything wrong or dangerous about reading your horoscope in the morning, or opening a fortune cookie and thinking, “oh, how accurate”?
[00:18:06] Probably not, but just remember, next time you hear a statement and think “that’s so me”, just remember that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people, are thinking exactly the same thing.
[00:18:22] OK then, that is it for this little exploration of The Barnum Effect, the powerful psychological effect that makes us believe things are about us, even when they are not.
[00:18:34] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
[00:18:38] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:18:42] Do you believe in astrology and fortune telling? If so, what do you say to people who think it is a load of nonsense?
[00:18:49] And if you don’t believe it, do you think it is some harmless fun, or do you think there is something a little more dangerous to it?
[00:18:57] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:19:01] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:19:10] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:19:15] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about something called The Barnum Effect.
[00:00:27] You might not have heard of it before, but you have almost certainly experienced it.
[00:00:33] If you have read a horoscope, had your fortune told, or cracked open a fortune cookie in a Chinese restaurant, and thought, that is so me, then you have experienced the Barnum Effect firsthand.
[00:00:48] So, in this episode we are going to look at this in detail, explain how it works, and what you can do about it.
[00:00:56] OK then, The Barnum Effect.
[00:01:00] When I was growing up in the UK, every Saturday night on primetime TV there was a show called The National Lottery Live.
[00:01:11] Every week, millions of British people would play the National Lottery, choosing their lucky numbers, and on Saturday evening they would eagerly await to see whether their numbers had come up, whether they were going to be instantly turned into a millionaire.
[00:01:29] To add to the suspense, before the numbers were drawn, the camera would turn to a middle aged lady with jet black hair, her fringe cut short.
[00:01:42] Her name was “Mystic Meg”.
[00:01:45] She would often wear a purple, velvety coat, and hold a crystal ball in front of her.
[00:01:51] Behind her there was smoke, drawings of planets, and mysterious signs.
[00:01:58] She would look into her crystal ball, then directly at the camera, and in a soft and mysterious but assertive voice, announce what her crystal ball had told her about the people who would be winning the lottery that evening.
[00:02:15] Here’s a clip of her doing exactly that.
[00:02:19] Dreammaker planet Neptune and Venus spin fortunes for Scorpio and Capricorn and someone who bought a ticket at 6:00 PM today. The power of the pendulum is spelling out Pat and Cathy as winning names. And a woman wearing dark blue is serving drinks. A gray cat with golden eyes is close by. Insurance workers, bin men and a dentist will be celebrating too.
[00:03:05] So to recap, what did she say?
[00:03:09] It would be good news for Scorpio and Capricorn.
[00:03:13] Someone who bought a ticket at 6pm today will be a winner.
[00:03:17] People called Pat and Cathy will be lucky tonight..
[00:03:21] A woman wearing dark blue is serving drinks.
[00:03:24] A grey cat with golden eyes is close nearby.
[00:03:28] Insurance workers, bin men and a dentist will be celebrating too.
[00:03:34] And you heard the screams of celebration, as people heard the predictions of Mystic Meg and thought, hey, she is talking about me.
[00:03:44] Now, that clip was from October the 28th of 1995, and I cannot say with certainty that the big winner that evening was not a dentist called Pat who bought a ticket at 6pm with a grey cat with golden eyes.
[00:03:59] The point is, in all probability, one or several of those predictions probably could have been true for one of the winners. There are 12 star signs, and two were named. Pat and Cathy are both popular names, 6pm is a popular time to buy a ticket, a woman in dark blue serving drinks is a pretty common occurrence on a Saturday evening in the UK. There are lots of grey cats, and lots of insurance workers, bin men and dentists.
[00:04:31] And indeed, no doubt tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of people heard those predictions that evening and thought, it’s me, she is talking about me. Then the winning numbers were revealed and, uh oh, they didn’t win.
[00:04:48] This is a prime example of The Barnum Effect, which is, and I'm quoting directly, “the phenomenon that occurs when individuals believe that personality descriptions apply specifically to them, despite the fact that the description is actually filled with information that applies to everyone.” End quote.
[00:05:10] Despite the fact that we all kind of know that predictions like the ones Mystic Meg would make could apply to many people, they can be alluring, they can be attractive, we want to believe them. In the specific case of Mystic Meg, she was something of a national icon.
[00:05:29] She presented this fortune telling segment on the National Lottery Live programme from 1994 to 2000, and she had an astrology column in one of the country’s most read newspapers.
[00:05:42] Indeed, her popularity was such that she even entered the English language. When a politician or football manager or someone like that was asked to make a prediction about an election or a football match, they might respond “I’m not Mystic Meg”, as another way of saying “I don’t know and don't ask me about the future”.
[00:06:05] Now, you probably have similar people in your country, astrologers and predictors of the future. You might even believe them.
[00:06:14] A reported 29% of Americans believe in horoscopes and astrology, 23% of French people do, and 17% of Mexicans do.
[00:06:25] Clearly, for lots of people, perhaps even for you, it’s important.
[00:06:30] But it is a prime example of the so-called “Barnum Effect”, this idea that we think that a statement is about us, when in fact it could be about anyone.
[00:06:42] The term was named after a 19th century American businessman called P.T. Barnum, who ran a collection of circuses involving fortune tellers and mystics. Now, was he a deep believer in spirituality, horoscopes and the like? No. He was a capitalist, a businessman, and was reported to have said “a sucker is born every minute”.
[00:07:08] A sucker, by the way, is a gullible person, someone who is likely to believe anything that they are told.
[00:07:16] Clearly, Barnum wasn’t the first person to trick people out of their hard-earned money by pretending to be able to tell their fortunes or read their horoscopes. This is an industry as old as time.
[00:07:29] But the term “The Barnum Effect” was only coined relatively recently, in 1956, after there was an increasing amount of research done into this psychological effect.
[00:07:43] The research typically went something like this. A researcher would provide a group of people with a series of statements that they were told were specific to them, and then ask them to say how accurate they were.
[00:07:59] I’ll actually read you out one of the tests now, so you can experience this for yourself.
[00:08:05] You probably know the point I’m trying to make, but imagine for one moment that I have asked you to fill out a questionnaire where you need to answer questions about your personality. I tell you that I will examine your results and then provide you with my detailed analysis of your personality.
[00:08:25] So, here we go, here is my “expert” diagnosis of your personality:
[00:08:31] You have a great need for other people to like and admire you.
[00:08:36] You have a tendency to be critical of yourself.
[00:08:39] You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage.
[00:08:46] While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them.
[00:08:52] Your sexual adjustment has presented problems for you.
[00:08:57] Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside.
[00:09:04] At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.
[00:09:11] You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations.
[00:09:20] You pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof.
[00:09:28] You have found it unwise to be frank in revealing yourself to others.
[00:09:33] At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, reserved.
[00:09:43] Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic.
[00:09:47] Security is one of your major goals in life.
[00:09:52] OK, so those are the 13 character traits that the participants were given, and they were told that they were specifically about them, based on the answers they had provided.
[00:10:06] Then, the thirty-nine participants were asked to rank on a scale of 0 to 5 in terms of how accurate each statement was. 0 for completely wrong, 5 for exactly right.
[00:10:23] When the results were collected, the participants gave the statements an average of 4.3, they said that they were very accurate.
[00:10:34] This was the exact test that was conducted by an American psychologist called Bertram Forer, and indeed the Barnum Effect is sometimes called The Forer Effect.
[00:10:46] Forer would later reveal that every participant was given the same statements; the answers they had provided about their personality were not taken into consideration. And indeed, these “observations” about their personalities were taken from a book about astrology that he found in a nearby newsstand.
[00:11:09] He published this in a 1949 study, and the results were clear for all to see.
[00:11:16] Now, psychologists have made several observations about how this effect works, about why perfectly rational and intelligent people are likely to believe statements like this.
[00:11:30] Firstly, if the person believes that the analysis is only about them, that the predictions or statements are specific to them. Of course, if you think something is tailored to you, you are more likely to believe it.
[00:11:46] Secondly, if they believe that the person making the predictions is a person of authority. This can be because that person is a psychologist or it’s because that person has the authority of going on national TV every Saturday evening and being given a platform to predict the future.
[00:12:08] And thirdly, if the statements contain lots of positive character traits. Everyone is more likely to believe positive statements about them than negative statements, people naturally love praise and dislike criticism.
[00:12:24] It is a classic cognitive bias, a reality that we create for ourselves, despite the fact that when we analyse it in detail, we know it not to be true.
[00:12:37] Now, as a final point to add to this little exploration of The Barnum Effect and cognitive bias, it isn’t just Mystic Meg, astrologers and tarot card readers who take advantage of our cognitive biases to exploit us.
[00:12:53] It is also something that many technology companies use.
[00:12:57] If you use products like Spotify or Netflix, you will probably be recommended songs or movies “handpicked for you”. Sure, they do have all of your data about what you have listened to or watched before, but in all probability this recommendation is given to tens or hundreds of millions of people based on relatively broad demographic data; it’s not as personal as you might think it is.
[00:13:26] If Netflix says “ you might like this latest blockbuster film”, you might think “well, yes I might like that, how creepy”, but tens of millions of other people are getting exactly the same message.
[00:13:41] You see this with stuff you buy online as well.
[00:13:45] Sure, many companies will send you personalised advertising and emails after you “forget” to buy a specific pair of shoes on a website.
[00:13:54] But others will take advantage of this cognitive bias and show you supposedly “personalised” recommendations, but in fact they are recommendations that might apply to anyone.
[00:14:08] And to give you a specific language learning example of a cognitive bias, I’m sure you have seen many websites for English learning courses that ask you a series of questions that you read and think “of course, yes, that’s me”, that person is speaking to me and me alone.
[00:14:27] Questions like “Do you wish people didn’t ask you where you came from? Do you want never to be asked to repeat yourself? Would you like a perfect English accent?”
[00:14:37] Of course, almost everyone reading those questions would answer yes.
[00:14:43] And where you see the Barnum Effect in full swing is on websites or apps that ask you to input information about yourself so that you think that it is personalised, therefore you are more likely to take whatever action the app wants you to take.
[00:15:00] I actually tested this out on a few popular English apps, creating different accounts and providing completely different answers during the onboarding process, the sign up process, yet the experience afterwards was exactly the same. There is no need to personalise the experience if you already think that it is personalised.
[00:15:24] You might know that the most popular language learning app in the world, Duolingo, asks you to do things like select how often you want to learn when you sign up.
[00:15:34] It now uses this data to personalise your experience, but when it first launched this feature it didn’t. Still the team at Duolingo made an interesting observation. They ran a test and saw that people who set a goal and supposedly “personalised” their experience were more likely to come back to the app than those who weren’t asked to set a goal.
[00:16:01] Importantly, it didn’t initially adapt the user experience after sign up depending on the goal that had been set; it just analysed the data of people who had been asked to set a goal against those who hadn’t, and saw that even the simple factor of thinking that an experience is personalised to you was likely to increase engagement.
[00:16:23] So, in this case at least, the Barnum Effect isn’t always used for negative outcomes; it can push people into taking an action that they want to take anyway.
[00:16:35] That being said, it is powerful, and it’s something that we should at least be aware of.
[00:16:40] So, how can you avoid falling for the Barnum Effect, how can you beat this particular cognitive bias?
[00:16:49] Well, one way is to think about the three reasons that people tend to fall into the trap, and analyse the statement against each one.
[00:16:59] Is the statement really specific to you? If it’s a star sign, it is specific to 1/12 of the population. If it’s a generic statement, think about how many people it would apply to.
[00:17:12] Is the person making the statement a person of authority? Should you trust them? Have predictions they have made in the past come true? Or are they an octopus or someone who you have paid money to read your palm?
[00:17:28] And last but not least, what is actually being said? Are you being flattered? Is the statement positive or negative? If it’s positive, remember that you are more likely to believe that it applies to you.
[00:17:44] So, ask yourself these three questions, and you should be able to stop any potential Barnum Effect before it’s too late.
[00:17:52] But, even if you do fall for it, is it so harmful after all? Is there anything wrong or dangerous about reading your horoscope in the morning, or opening a fortune cookie and thinking, “oh, how accurate”?
[00:18:06] Probably not, but just remember, next time you hear a statement and think “that’s so me”, just remember that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people, are thinking exactly the same thing.
[00:18:22] OK then, that is it for this little exploration of The Barnum Effect, the powerful psychological effect that makes us believe things are about us, even when they are not.
[00:18:34] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
[00:18:38] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:18:42] Do you believe in astrology and fortune telling? If so, what do you say to people who think it is a load of nonsense?
[00:18:49] And if you don’t believe it, do you think it is some harmless fun, or do you think there is something a little more dangerous to it?
[00:18:57] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:19:01] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:19:10] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:19:15] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about something called The Barnum Effect.
[00:00:27] You might not have heard of it before, but you have almost certainly experienced it.
[00:00:33] If you have read a horoscope, had your fortune told, or cracked open a fortune cookie in a Chinese restaurant, and thought, that is so me, then you have experienced the Barnum Effect firsthand.
[00:00:48] So, in this episode we are going to look at this in detail, explain how it works, and what you can do about it.
[00:00:56] OK then, The Barnum Effect.
[00:01:00] When I was growing up in the UK, every Saturday night on primetime TV there was a show called The National Lottery Live.
[00:01:11] Every week, millions of British people would play the National Lottery, choosing their lucky numbers, and on Saturday evening they would eagerly await to see whether their numbers had come up, whether they were going to be instantly turned into a millionaire.
[00:01:29] To add to the suspense, before the numbers were drawn, the camera would turn to a middle aged lady with jet black hair, her fringe cut short.
[00:01:42] Her name was “Mystic Meg”.
[00:01:45] She would often wear a purple, velvety coat, and hold a crystal ball in front of her.
[00:01:51] Behind her there was smoke, drawings of planets, and mysterious signs.
[00:01:58] She would look into her crystal ball, then directly at the camera, and in a soft and mysterious but assertive voice, announce what her crystal ball had told her about the people who would be winning the lottery that evening.
[00:02:15] Here’s a clip of her doing exactly that.
[00:02:19] Dreammaker planet Neptune and Venus spin fortunes for Scorpio and Capricorn and someone who bought a ticket at 6:00 PM today. The power of the pendulum is spelling out Pat and Cathy as winning names. And a woman wearing dark blue is serving drinks. A gray cat with golden eyes is close by. Insurance workers, bin men and a dentist will be celebrating too.
[00:03:05] So to recap, what did she say?
[00:03:09] It would be good news for Scorpio and Capricorn.
[00:03:13] Someone who bought a ticket at 6pm today will be a winner.
[00:03:17] People called Pat and Cathy will be lucky tonight..
[00:03:21] A woman wearing dark blue is serving drinks.
[00:03:24] A grey cat with golden eyes is close nearby.
[00:03:28] Insurance workers, bin men and a dentist will be celebrating too.
[00:03:34] And you heard the screams of celebration, as people heard the predictions of Mystic Meg and thought, hey, she is talking about me.
[00:03:44] Now, that clip was from October the 28th of 1995, and I cannot say with certainty that the big winner that evening was not a dentist called Pat who bought a ticket at 6pm with a grey cat with golden eyes.
[00:03:59] The point is, in all probability, one or several of those predictions probably could have been true for one of the winners. There are 12 star signs, and two were named. Pat and Cathy are both popular names, 6pm is a popular time to buy a ticket, a woman in dark blue serving drinks is a pretty common occurrence on a Saturday evening in the UK. There are lots of grey cats, and lots of insurance workers, bin men and dentists.
[00:04:31] And indeed, no doubt tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of people heard those predictions that evening and thought, it’s me, she is talking about me. Then the winning numbers were revealed and, uh oh, they didn’t win.
[00:04:48] This is a prime example of The Barnum Effect, which is, and I'm quoting directly, “the phenomenon that occurs when individuals believe that personality descriptions apply specifically to them, despite the fact that the description is actually filled with information that applies to everyone.” End quote.
[00:05:10] Despite the fact that we all kind of know that predictions like the ones Mystic Meg would make could apply to many people, they can be alluring, they can be attractive, we want to believe them. In the specific case of Mystic Meg, she was something of a national icon.
[00:05:29] She presented this fortune telling segment on the National Lottery Live programme from 1994 to 2000, and she had an astrology column in one of the country’s most read newspapers.
[00:05:42] Indeed, her popularity was such that she even entered the English language. When a politician or football manager or someone like that was asked to make a prediction about an election or a football match, they might respond “I’m not Mystic Meg”, as another way of saying “I don’t know and don't ask me about the future”.
[00:06:05] Now, you probably have similar people in your country, astrologers and predictors of the future. You might even believe them.
[00:06:14] A reported 29% of Americans believe in horoscopes and astrology, 23% of French people do, and 17% of Mexicans do.
[00:06:25] Clearly, for lots of people, perhaps even for you, it’s important.
[00:06:30] But it is a prime example of the so-called “Barnum Effect”, this idea that we think that a statement is about us, when in fact it could be about anyone.
[00:06:42] The term was named after a 19th century American businessman called P.T. Barnum, who ran a collection of circuses involving fortune tellers and mystics. Now, was he a deep believer in spirituality, horoscopes and the like? No. He was a capitalist, a businessman, and was reported to have said “a sucker is born every minute”.
[00:07:08] A sucker, by the way, is a gullible person, someone who is likely to believe anything that they are told.
[00:07:16] Clearly, Barnum wasn’t the first person to trick people out of their hard-earned money by pretending to be able to tell their fortunes or read their horoscopes. This is an industry as old as time.
[00:07:29] But the term “The Barnum Effect” was only coined relatively recently, in 1956, after there was an increasing amount of research done into this psychological effect.
[00:07:43] The research typically went something like this. A researcher would provide a group of people with a series of statements that they were told were specific to them, and then ask them to say how accurate they were.
[00:07:59] I’ll actually read you out one of the tests now, so you can experience this for yourself.
[00:08:05] You probably know the point I’m trying to make, but imagine for one moment that I have asked you to fill out a questionnaire where you need to answer questions about your personality. I tell you that I will examine your results and then provide you with my detailed analysis of your personality.
[00:08:25] So, here we go, here is my “expert” diagnosis of your personality:
[00:08:31] You have a great need for other people to like and admire you.
[00:08:36] You have a tendency to be critical of yourself.
[00:08:39] You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage.
[00:08:46] While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them.
[00:08:52] Your sexual adjustment has presented problems for you.
[00:08:57] Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside.
[00:09:04] At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.
[00:09:11] You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations.
[00:09:20] You pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof.
[00:09:28] You have found it unwise to be frank in revealing yourself to others.
[00:09:33] At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, reserved.
[00:09:43] Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic.
[00:09:47] Security is one of your major goals in life.
[00:09:52] OK, so those are the 13 character traits that the participants were given, and they were told that they were specifically about them, based on the answers they had provided.
[00:10:06] Then, the thirty-nine participants were asked to rank on a scale of 0 to 5 in terms of how accurate each statement was. 0 for completely wrong, 5 for exactly right.
[00:10:23] When the results were collected, the participants gave the statements an average of 4.3, they said that they were very accurate.
[00:10:34] This was the exact test that was conducted by an American psychologist called Bertram Forer, and indeed the Barnum Effect is sometimes called The Forer Effect.
[00:10:46] Forer would later reveal that every participant was given the same statements; the answers they had provided about their personality were not taken into consideration. And indeed, these “observations” about their personalities were taken from a book about astrology that he found in a nearby newsstand.
[00:11:09] He published this in a 1949 study, and the results were clear for all to see.
[00:11:16] Now, psychologists have made several observations about how this effect works, about why perfectly rational and intelligent people are likely to believe statements like this.
[00:11:30] Firstly, if the person believes that the analysis is only about them, that the predictions or statements are specific to them. Of course, if you think something is tailored to you, you are more likely to believe it.
[00:11:46] Secondly, if they believe that the person making the predictions is a person of authority. This can be because that person is a psychologist or it’s because that person has the authority of going on national TV every Saturday evening and being given a platform to predict the future.
[00:12:08] And thirdly, if the statements contain lots of positive character traits. Everyone is more likely to believe positive statements about them than negative statements, people naturally love praise and dislike criticism.
[00:12:24] It is a classic cognitive bias, a reality that we create for ourselves, despite the fact that when we analyse it in detail, we know it not to be true.
[00:12:37] Now, as a final point to add to this little exploration of The Barnum Effect and cognitive bias, it isn’t just Mystic Meg, astrologers and tarot card readers who take advantage of our cognitive biases to exploit us.
[00:12:53] It is also something that many technology companies use.
[00:12:57] If you use products like Spotify or Netflix, you will probably be recommended songs or movies “handpicked for you”. Sure, they do have all of your data about what you have listened to or watched before, but in all probability this recommendation is given to tens or hundreds of millions of people based on relatively broad demographic data; it’s not as personal as you might think it is.
[00:13:26] If Netflix says “ you might like this latest blockbuster film”, you might think “well, yes I might like that, how creepy”, but tens of millions of other people are getting exactly the same message.
[00:13:41] You see this with stuff you buy online as well.
[00:13:45] Sure, many companies will send you personalised advertising and emails after you “forget” to buy a specific pair of shoes on a website.
[00:13:54] But others will take advantage of this cognitive bias and show you supposedly “personalised” recommendations, but in fact they are recommendations that might apply to anyone.
[00:14:08] And to give you a specific language learning example of a cognitive bias, I’m sure you have seen many websites for English learning courses that ask you a series of questions that you read and think “of course, yes, that’s me”, that person is speaking to me and me alone.
[00:14:27] Questions like “Do you wish people didn’t ask you where you came from? Do you want never to be asked to repeat yourself? Would you like a perfect English accent?”
[00:14:37] Of course, almost everyone reading those questions would answer yes.
[00:14:43] And where you see the Barnum Effect in full swing is on websites or apps that ask you to input information about yourself so that you think that it is personalised, therefore you are more likely to take whatever action the app wants you to take.
[00:15:00] I actually tested this out on a few popular English apps, creating different accounts and providing completely different answers during the onboarding process, the sign up process, yet the experience afterwards was exactly the same. There is no need to personalise the experience if you already think that it is personalised.
[00:15:24] You might know that the most popular language learning app in the world, Duolingo, asks you to do things like select how often you want to learn when you sign up.
[00:15:34] It now uses this data to personalise your experience, but when it first launched this feature it didn’t. Still the team at Duolingo made an interesting observation. They ran a test and saw that people who set a goal and supposedly “personalised” their experience were more likely to come back to the app than those who weren’t asked to set a goal.
[00:16:01] Importantly, it didn’t initially adapt the user experience after sign up depending on the goal that had been set; it just analysed the data of people who had been asked to set a goal against those who hadn’t, and saw that even the simple factor of thinking that an experience is personalised to you was likely to increase engagement.
[00:16:23] So, in this case at least, the Barnum Effect isn’t always used for negative outcomes; it can push people into taking an action that they want to take anyway.
[00:16:35] That being said, it is powerful, and it’s something that we should at least be aware of.
[00:16:40] So, how can you avoid falling for the Barnum Effect, how can you beat this particular cognitive bias?
[00:16:49] Well, one way is to think about the three reasons that people tend to fall into the trap, and analyse the statement against each one.
[00:16:59] Is the statement really specific to you? If it’s a star sign, it is specific to 1/12 of the population. If it’s a generic statement, think about how many people it would apply to.
[00:17:12] Is the person making the statement a person of authority? Should you trust them? Have predictions they have made in the past come true? Or are they an octopus or someone who you have paid money to read your palm?
[00:17:28] And last but not least, what is actually being said? Are you being flattered? Is the statement positive or negative? If it’s positive, remember that you are more likely to believe that it applies to you.
[00:17:44] So, ask yourself these three questions, and you should be able to stop any potential Barnum Effect before it’s too late.
[00:17:52] But, even if you do fall for it, is it so harmful after all? Is there anything wrong or dangerous about reading your horoscope in the morning, or opening a fortune cookie and thinking, “oh, how accurate”?
[00:18:06] Probably not, but just remember, next time you hear a statement and think “that’s so me”, just remember that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people, are thinking exactly the same thing.
[00:18:22] OK then, that is it for this little exploration of The Barnum Effect, the powerful psychological effect that makes us believe things are about us, even when they are not.
[00:18:34] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
[00:18:38] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:18:42] Do you believe in astrology and fortune telling? If so, what do you say to people who think it is a load of nonsense?
[00:18:49] And if you don’t believe it, do you think it is some harmless fun, or do you think there is something a little more dangerous to it?
[00:18:57] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:19:01] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:19:10] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:19:15] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
