EXAMINING THE BARNUM EFFECT - OVERVIEW
Study looking at the willingness of people to accept generalized personality descriptions
What's your personality type?
During my pursuit of a psychology degree at UT, I carried out a research study examining the willingness of people to accept generalized personality descriptions, and whether the content of the descriptions would have an effect on participant acceptance. Participants from the University of Texas campus and public places in Austin were recruited to answer a short personality questionnaire. They received one of four generalized personality descriptions, and then rated the test’s accuracy at describing their personality characteristics.
The Barnum Effect and Dissonance in Perceived Personality Descriptions
Psychology research study at the University of Texas at Austin
Role: experimenter
We hypothesized that:
Participants exposed a positive personality test result would award it a higher accuracy rating than a result with negative attributes.
We experimented with:
120 participants from UT campus and the Austin area who filled out a personality test we designed with four different personality description results.
We found that:
Participants rated both of the positive extreme and non-extreme descriptions as more accurate than the negative ones.
Background and Context:
Our research topic was the Barnum Effect, which is the tendency for an individual to accept generalized personality results as being accurate to their own personality. We measured how people view extreme personality results versus generalized positive/negative results in terms of accuracy to their own personality.
Furthermore, the Self-Verification theory, which asserts that people want to be known and understood according to their firmly held beliefs and feelings about themselves, also pertained to our study. One's own self-concepts and self-esteem affects their acceptance of the feedback (Swann, 1983). For example, if a participant has a positive self-concept, they should be more inclined to accept the positive personality results.
We hypothesized that
In accordance with the Barnum Effect and Self-Verification Theory, we predicted that participants exposed to the positive personality test result would award it a higher accuracy rating than the test result with negative attributes.
We also hypothesized that the positive result with an outrageous portion would be rated with higher accuracy than the negative result with an outrageous portion, with both having been lower in rated accuracy than the normal generalized positive and negative results.
We experimented with
Research Method
Participants
120 people from the University of Texas at Austin campus and Austin area
Materials
15-question online personality quiz
Four different personality descriptions: orange- positive generalized result, red- negative generalized result, green- positive extreme result, blue- extreme negative result.
Accuracy rating form that asked the participant to rate their result on how accurate they perceived it to be to their own personality on a scale from 1-10 (10 being most accurate).
Response breakdown of answers to one of the personality quiz questions
Design
Between-subject design
Independent variables: extremity of the description and positivity of the description.
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Each variable had two levels
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Levels of extremity: non-extreme test results and extreme test results
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Levels of positivity: negative test results or positive test results
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Dependent variable: participant’s accuracy rating of their personality description
Procedure
120 participants recruited
Randomly assigned participants to each condition (one of the four personality descriptions)
Signed the consent form and answered personality survey
Received personality description results
Assigned an accuracy rating to description on a scale of 1-10 (10 being most accurate)
We found that:
Research Results
A 2x2 Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), was conducted to test the effects of extremity of personality descriptions (non-extreme vs. extreme) and positivity of personality descriptions (positive vs. negative) on self-reported accuracy ratings of the descriptions. The results of the ANOVA are shown in Table 1, and the means and standard deviations are shown in Table 2.
Table 1.
Analysis of variance for accuracy rating due to positivity and extremity of personality descriptions
Table 2.
Descriptive statistics for accuracy rating on extremity and positivity in personality descriptions
Using an alpha level of .05 for all tests, we found no statistically significant main effect of extremity in personality descriptions on rated accuracy; The ANOVA also revealed a statistically significant main effect of positivity in the personality descriptions on rated accuracy.
As shown in Figure 1, participants who received positive, non-extreme personality descriptions gave a higher rating of accuracy than those who received negative, non-extreme descriptions. Similarly, those who received positive, extreme descriptions rated them higher in accuracy than participants who were given negative, extreme descriptions.
Figure 1.
The participant accuracy ratings of the extreme/non-extreme and positive/negative personality descriptions they received.
Discussion
The findings of the study supported the part of our hypothesis that stated participants would give positive personality test results a higher accuracy rating than the results with negative attributes. Also, the extreme positive results would be rated with higher accuracy than the extreme negative result. However, we predicted that both of the extreme results would have lower accuracy ratings than the generalized, non-extreme results, and our data did not support this portion of our hypothesis.
These findings indicate that people have a higher tendency to accept generalized personality descriptions as being accurate to their own if they are positive results; this acceptance of general results as descriptive and accurate to one’s own personality has been supported by research on the Barnum Effect.
Future Research Direction
Sample size and selection
Randomize selection of participants and include a larger number of them
Measure self-esteem
Self-esteem could play a role in a person’s acceptance of personality descriptions
Study gender and age
Gender and age may have effects in self-reported accuracy ratings or acceptance of the personality test results
Reflection: Challenges and Takeaways
This was the first research study that I designed and conducted, and it came as no small feat. Deciding on a research question posed the first big challenge to our team, and then actually designing the experiment and going through multiple iterations to test for validity and potential confounds proved to be a test of patience and determination. It's easy to give up and walk away; sometimes it's tempting to do just that. We pushed through the pains of experiment design, participant recruitment, testing, and analysis, and this study proved to be one of the best learning experiences I've had in school.
References
Forer, B. R. (1949). The fallacy of personal validation: A classroom demonstration of gullibility. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 44, 118-123.
Johnson, J.T., Cain, L. M., Falke, T.L., Hayman, J., & Perillo, E. (1985). The ‘Barnum effect’ revisited: Cognitive and motivational factors in the acceptance of personality descriptions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 49(5), 1378-1391.
Poskus, M.S. (2014). A new way of looking at the Barnum Effect and its links to personality traits in groups receiving different types of personality feedback. Psichologiia, 5095-105.
Snyder, C. R.; Larson, Glenn R. (1972). A further look at student acceptance of general personality interpretations. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Vol 38(3), 384-388.
Swann, Willam B. Jr. (1983). Self-Verification Theory. Handbook of Theories of Social Psychology, 23-42.