The Barnum Effect and the sweet nothings of astrology
Personalisation can sometimes be generalised.
Your horoscope: “You enjoy being spontaneous in life but also like well-planned decisions sometimes. You are loyal and respectful towards people who’re loyal and respect you back. You are usually an optimistic person but feel discouraged in certain situations.”
Isn’t it amazing how accurately any of these messages could fit for you?
This is the Barnum Effect.
The Barnum Effect is a cognitive bias where people are led to believe any generic positive statement when told that it specifically applies to them, when, in fact, it is as generalist as can be.
The above horoscope is a vague statement that would apply to the majority of the crowd, but it tricks people into believing that it’s tailored just for them.
This cognitive bias works best when its a positive statement; people want to relate to positive predictions about themselves.
The Roots of Barnum Effect
This effect comes from P.T Barnum, the American Greatest Showman (19th century), but it was in 1948 when a psychology professor, Bertram Forer, conducted an experiment illustrating this phenomenon.
He published his findings in this original research paper titled “The Fallacy of Personal Validation: A Classroom Demonstration of Gullibility.”
The study participants were given a personality test and were told they’d get unique personalised feedback based on the test. Interestingly, instead of giving each individual specific feedback, he handed out similar generic statements to everyone.
The participants found their generalised statements to be of high accuracy for them and gave an impressive rating of 4.26 to the test (5 being most accurate).
Astrology’s deep cultural influence
This psychological effect has only been on the rise ever since, more so because of more and more people believing in astrology and horoscope predictions.
Astrology has been unfurling and blooming in this era, which wasn’t how it was in the late 1970s. This rise began with the introduction of computers, the Internet and the accelerator pedal was pushed with the exponential growth of social media, reaching thousands and millions of people from all across the world.
People seek comfort, encouragement and look for an escape from the real world with the comforting, positive statements made for them in the name of astrology. People might not believe in astrology but would still relate and identify with the horoscope predictions made just for them. It’s is all about psychology. It’s not about predicting anything; you just have to describe the user to themselves. It’s a tool for self-reflection.
Here is a research paper on “Why people perceive horoscopes as being true”.
Let’s look at what the Barnum effect means in the digital world.
What does it mean for design?
It’s an illusion of making people believe in having a personalised experience, but it’s crucial to steer away from deceiving customers and turning it into a dark pattern.
Having said that, this phenomenon can be used to engage and build customer relationships across digital media and campaigns.
Marketing campaigns and digital media can leverage this to increase and optimise their conversion rate.
Brands having a tagline “Just for you” hit that sweet spot of specific yet generic. People love it when something is made “just for them”.
The brands can build strong relationships and trust with their customers by giving them a feeling of a personalised experience. The perception of personally interacting with the company leads to user attention and retention, resulting in high conversion rates and customer loyalty.
Where can it be seen?
1. Pop Quizzes on Facebook and Buzzfeed
“Which F.R.I.E.N.D.S character you resemble the most? Take a quiz to find out.”
Most of us probably seen/done quizzes like these on Facebook and Buzzfeed, and it was always amusing knowing that we resemble our favourite character.
The above “Which city should you actually live in?” quiz asks a few generic questions as a survey, and this was the end result. Those statements are generalised and could be applicable for a large crowd, and not just you, but at the same time giving us the illusion of a tailored answer just for us.
These pop quizzes attract a lot of attention, a simple “Which ‘Game of Thrones’ Character Are You?” Buzzfeed quiz drew over two million page views by simply employing this effect.
2. Spotify and Netflix
Users prefer content that is curated specifically for them. Two of the most popular products which employ this are Spotify and Netflix to better engage their users and provide a better experience. These products provide their users with a personalised playlist, “Your Daily Mix”, and movie recommendations tailored out “Just for you”.
There are algorithms used in these recommendation systems, but this psychology is thrown in the mix for better user retention.
3. Fortune Cookies
Fortune cookie is another product that makes uses of this psychological effect. Each person is given a generic positive statement, and people are led to believe it applies to them and that it’s a future prediction of their life events. Behind the huge popularity of the fortune cookies concept, its Barnum Effect doing all the magic behind the curtains.
Personalisation can sometimes be generalised
Astrology is a complex system to fathom, and it’s all about interpretation.
It understands millions of users’ psychology and anticipates the questions and answers they seek. They present to us exactly what we want to hear.
This powerful tool can help leverage the power of building better experiences and optimising conversions in digital agencies, but at the same time, it can take a dark turn as well. Ethics can help drive the domain of design and mitigate underhanded strategies. The direction to move in is pro-privacy, pro-user control, presenting good faith choices and therefore anti-deceptive-design.
All that needs to be done is to make the users feel they are individuals, and their individuality is recognised by tailoring out a personalised experience for them.
The Canvs Editorial team comprises of: Editorial Writer and Researcher- Paridhi Agrawal, the Editor’s Desk- Aalhad Joshi and Debprotim Roy, and Content Operations- Abin Rajan
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