Project Proposal
Barnum Effect: Influence of Social Desirability, Base rates and Personalization
Era Jain (Y9209)
Motivation
Why do people fall for the advice of astrologers, fortune tellers etc.? Is astrology actually true or people are inclined in believing it? It's an observation that every individual relates these predictions to exclusively himself when they are actually vague and very general, applicable to most of the people [2]. This is known as the 'Barnum Effect'. People have a tendency to selectively filter out those descriptions that do not describe them and retain those that are preferrable (mostly nice stuff). The aim of this study is to expose the greater acceptance of Barnum effect among the students in our institute (Barnum effect is unaffected by age and gender and is in general shown by everyone). Another aspect of the study is to analyze how social desirability, base rate and personalized statements affect Barnum effect [1].
- Social Desirability: Greater number of people desire this quality in them, infact believe that they have it
- Base Rates: A higer base rate quality exists in greater number of people
- Personalization: A statement is personalized if a person is made to believe that it is exclusively tailored for him
The aim here would be to show that majority people will be impressed by their Barnum profiles which are statements that are highly socially desirable and have high base rates. Acceptance should be lower for traits which are not socially desirable or are not commonly found.
Methodology
To investigate Social Desirability and Base Rates, three different kinds of personality traits are required to be evaluated:
- Barnum Statements - highly socially desirable statements with high base rates
- Rare Virtues - Highly socially desirable statements with low base rates
- Common faults - Low social desirability and high base rates
Robert et al. [1] conducted a study to create a pool of these statements. The study resulted in good number of Barnum statements and Common faults. However a high correlation was found between social desirability and base rate, due to which no statement met the criteria of a rare virtue.
The first part of my study would be to create a pool of rare virtues and to investigate if any correaltion exists between soical desirability and base rate. For this, subjects shall be given a questionnare of about 50-60 personality traits and they will have to rate each one of them on three different scales:
- Highly to least socially desirable
- Highly to least true of self
- Highly to least true of others
Rare virtues shall be the items with a high rating on scale 1 (above 50%) but low on scale 2 or 3 (below 50%).
The second part of my study will be along the lines of [1]. Subjects shall be told that the experiment concerns with evaluating a personality predicting software. Everyone shall be given 15 minutes to complete a personality test (Goldberg Personality Questionnare [3] or MMPI [4]). After the test, subjects shall be presented with their personality reports. There will six different kinds of reports: Personalized and non-personalized barnum reports, common faults and rare virtues. Each subject then shall be asked to rate how accurately the report defines their personality on a scale of 1 to 10. These ratings will help analyze the effects of social desirability, base rates and personalization on Barnum effect.
References
[1] Roberta Lynn Farley-Icard, "Factors that influence the Barnum Effect: Social desirability, base rates and personalization" (January 1, 2007). ETD Collection for University of Texas, El Paso. Paper AAI1444101.
[2] Forer, B.R. (1949). The fallacy of personal validation: a classroom demonstration of gullibility. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 44, 118-123.
[3] Goldberg, L.R. (1992). The development of markers for the big-five factor structure. Journal of Psychological Assessment, 4(1), 26-42.
[4] Butcher, J. N., Dahlstrom, W. G., Graham, J. R., Tellegen, A, & Kaemmer, B. (1989).The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2): Manual for administration and scoring. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
[5] Paul Rogers, Janice Soule, "Cross-Cultural Differences in the Acceptance of Barnum Profiles Supposedly Derived From Western Versus Chinese Astrology". Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology May 2009 vol. 40 no. 3 381-399.