Barnum Effect Personality Testing II

Barnum Effect

Personality Testing II

My scoring on the Barnum Personality Inventor was as follows:

Your Profile:

You have a great need for other people to like and admire you.

You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage.

Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside.

You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations.

You pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others statements without satisfactory proof.

You have a tendency to be critical of yourself.

At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.

At times you are extroverted, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, reserved.

While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them.

My first, immediate reaction to taking the test was that it was extremely accurate. It seemed to capture many of the contradictions in my personality, such as the fact that I am neither purely introverted nor extroverted and that there are many tensions between my exterior and interior persona. But I wondered if something was 'up,' given the fact that the test was named after P.T. Barnum! Also, unlike most personality tests I have taken in the past, the results were relatively flattering and complimentary about my personal characteristics in tone, rather than cool and clinical in tone. "One reason that people fall for the Barnum effect is that the feedback given in the typical experiment is so generally worded that there's practically nothing to disagree with" as well as the fact people like to believe good things about themselves (Whitbourne 2010:1).

I had previously heard about a test used to show the falseness of astrological horoscopes, in which a group of subjects were all given the same reading -- and all of them, regardless of their star sign, agreed how accurate it was! So I was not entirely surprised that everyone receives the same (vague) results to the 'Barnum' personality test! "People will believe any vague, generic set of personality descriptions of themselves if it appears that those descriptions come from a reputable source. Actually, the apparent source doesn't even have to be that reputable, though tests falsely labeled scientifically valid tend to produce a stronger effect" (Whitbourne 2010:1). For example, a personality test has more validity in the eyes of test-takers than a quiz in Cosmo.

The Barnum effect implies that the results of personality tests can be self-fulfilling prophesies. There is a reason that so many people enjoy taking personality tests, even for 'fun' in magazines and online. These quizzes, which are often not developed by professional psychologists, make people 'feel good' because they suggest that deeper understanding of one's psyche is possible simply by checking box A, B, or C. They also allow people to try to 'figure themselves out' in a way that is comfortingly simple and clear, unlike the messy process of psychoanalysis.

The Barnum effect calls into serious question the ability to discern someone's true personality through a questionnaire. It also points to the commonalities of the human condition: the 'grading' of a personality questionnaire seems true to a remarkably wide variety of people. However, there are several questions posed by the specific description generated by the online personality test. Are the results cross-cultural? For example, would someone who was not from an individualistic, change-focused, and esteem-oriented culture like America agree with the results? Is the Barnum effect more pronounced amongst certain types of people and are some individuals more apt to disagree with the results?

In contrast to the theory of the Barnum test, the Jung Typology posits that there are real differences between persons who are introverted and extroverted, for example, that can be measured on a personality test. Even Jung allows, however, that most individuals are not pure introverts or extroverts, but rather manifest one tendency to a slightly greater or lesser degree. The Barnum inventory, acknowledging this, specifically states that the test-taker is both extroverted and introverted at different times in his or her life. One of the sources of dissatisfaction with the Jung inventory is that most people are extroverted in some situations and introverted in others. Some people are very confident at work, but reserved at home. Others like speaking in front of people but hate having one-on-one conversations with others at a party. This acknowledgement of how contextual personality can be, and the fact that people can manifest a variety of traits, depending on the situation calls into question legitimate personality tests like the Jung Typology test -- it also explains why the vague, false readings of the Barnum test may feel more accurate than the results of a real test.