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The Forer (Barnum) Effect

I am sure that most of you have seen those posts which claim to tell you your personality by the way you sleep, by the way you eat Oreos, by the date you were born (astrology & horoscopes), by what your favorite color is, etc. You may be surprised at how many people actually believe in these personality “tests” (maybe you do, too?). The Oreos one is my favorite because it is beyond stupid. If you haven’t seen it, here is one of the many sites which feature the “quiz.” I especially find the “psychologists have discovered” part distasteful, as people generally believe everything claimed to have been discovered by scientists. Here is one of the many versions out there: 

So, if all these “tests” are bogus, then why do people believe in them? Why would anyone be convinced that they work if they, in fact, do not? The answer is simple: the Forer Effect (sometimes called the Barnum Effect).

Basically, the Forer (or Barnum) Effect is the tendency of people to rate statements about their personality as highly accurate, even though these same statements could apply to almost everyone else.

In 1949, Bertram R. Forer published a study in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology where he describes how the phenomena works. In the study, Forer had 39 of his students take a personality evaluation task (which he himself made) called Diagnostic Interest Bank. One week later, he gave his students their “personality sketch” and instructed them to refrain from showing it to each other.

“It was essential,” Forer wrote, “that no student see the sketch received by any other student because all sketches were identical.” All the sketches had the following statements:

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

You have a tendency to be critical of yourself.

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

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

Your sexual adjustment has presented problems for you.

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

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

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 found it unwise to be too frank in reveling yourself to others.

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

Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic.

Security is one of your major goals in life

Starting to sound a bit like you? That’s because these statements generally apply to every single one of us at one point or another in life. And, in fact, Forer’s students rated the personality sketch to be highly accurate at representing their personalities. These are the results obtained from the study:

As you can see, when asked to rate the accuracy of the personality sketch (0 being poor and 5 being perfect), most students rated the sketch as a 4 and a 5, even though they all received the same personality sketch. (N represents the number of students in the study).

Here’s a demonstration Derren Brown did on his program, Trick of the Mind, where he basically replicated Forer’s study on three distinct groups of people. One group from the UK, another from the U.S., and a third from Spain. Check it out:

  Reference

Forer, Bertram. R. (1949). The fallacy of personal validation: A classroom demonstration of gullibility. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 44(1). 118-123.

Read the full story here.

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(Image caption: Because babies born prematurely are still developing, they typically have smaller brains than full-term infants. Shown are depictions of the cortical-surface area of the brain at different points in gestation. Illustration by Eric Young)

Breast milk linked to significant early brain growth in preemies

Feeding premature babies mostly breast milk during the first month of life appears to spur more robust brain growth, compared with babies given little or no breast milk.

Studying preterm infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, the researchers found that preemies whose daily diets were at least 50 percent breast milk had more brain tissue and cortical-surface area by their due dates than premature babies who consumed significantly less breast milk.

The researchers, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, presented their findings May 3 at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies, in Baltimore.

“The brains of babies born before their due dates usually are not fully developed,” said senior investigator Cynthia Rogers, MD, an assistant professor of child psychiatry who treats patients at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. “But breast milk has been shown to be helpful in other areas of development, so we looked to see what effect it might have on the brain. With MRI scans, we found that babies fed more breast milk had larger brain volumes. This is important because several other studies have shown a correlation between brain volume and cognitive development.”

The study included 77 preterm infants. The researchers retrospectively looked to see how much breast milk those babies had received while being cared for in the NICU. Then, the researchers conducted brain scans on those infants at about the time each would have been born had the babies not arrived early. All of the babies were born at least 10 weeks early, with an average gestation of 26 weeks, or about 14 weeks premature. Because they are still developing, preemies typically have smaller brains than full-term infants.

First author Erin Reynolds, a research technician in Rogers’ laboratory, said in gauging the effects of breast milk on the babies’ brains, the researchers didn’t distinguish between milk that came from the babies’ own mothers and breast milk donated by other women. Rather, they focused on the influence of breast milk in general.

“As the amount of breast milk increased, so did a baby’s chances of having a larger cortical surface area,” Reynolds said. “The cortex is the part of the brain associated with cognition, so we assume that more cortex will help improve cognition as the babies grow and develop.”

Preterm birth is a leading cause of neurologic problems in children and has been linked to psychiatric disorders later in childhood. Rogers and her team plan to follow the babies in the study through their first several years of life to see how they grow, focusing on their motor, cognitive and social development. As the babies get older, the researchers believe they will be able to determine the effects of early exposure to breast milk on later developmental outcomes.

“We want to see whether this difference in brain size has an effect on any of those developmental milestones,” Rogers said. “Neonatologists already believe breast milk is the best nutrition for preterm infants. We wanted to see whether it was possible to detect the impact of breast milk on the brain this early in life and whether the benefits appeared quickly or developed over time.”

Rogers said further investigation is needed to determine specifically how breast milk affects the brain and what is present in the milk that seems to promote brain development. She explained that because all of the babies in the study were born early it isn’t clear whether breast milk would provide similar benefits for babies born at full term.

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Life mission :)

Collection of works by Aldous Huxley, enjoy!

Aldous Huxley - Ape and Essence

Aldous Huxley - Brave New World

Aldous Huxley - Crome Yellow

Aldous Huxley - Ends and Means

Aldous Huxley - Heaven And Hell

Aldous Huxley - Island

Aldous Huxley - Jacob’s Hands

Aldous Huxley - The Art Of Seeing

Aldous Huxley - The Doors Of Perception

Aldous Huxley - The Perennial Philosophy

Aldous Huxley  -Culture and the Individual

Aldous Huxley - Drugs And Creativity

Aldous Huxley - Now More than Ever (2000)

Aldous Huxley - Time Must Have a Stop (1944)