Cold Reading

More info on cold reading, which I find fascinating.

Denis Dutton on Cold Reading
Modern interest in the Barnum Effect among psychologists dates from Forer’s classic experiment in which a group of 39 undergraduate psychology students were given the Diagnostic Interest Blank. A week later every student was provided with the same personality description, but was led to believe that each description was uniquely different, having been derived from the test results. The students were then asked to rate the accuracy of their “individual” personality descriptions on a scale of 0 (poor) to 5 (perfect). Of the 39 students, only 5 rated it below 4, and no one rated it below 2 (average). The average rating was 4.3.
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Forer’s original personality description is perfectly servicable even today....

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 some 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 or done 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 revealing 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.
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Snyder and Larson found that subjects were more inclined to accept Barnum descriptions of themselves if such descriptions are presented as derived uniquely for them, rather than just given as a general description said to be true for most people.9 This crucial function played by the illusion of uniqueness in the acceptance of Barnum descriptions was decisively demonstrated in a later experiment conducted by Snyder and Shenkel.27,28

Snyder and Shenkel had bogus student “astrologers” prepare horoscopes, which were actually uniform Barnum descriptions, for a group of subjects. The horoscopes were to be rated by the subjects on a 5 point scale: 1, very poor; 2, poor; 3, average; 4, good; 5, excellent. Some of the subjects gave the “astrologer” no birth information at all, members of a second group were required to provide their month of birth, while a third group gave the exact year, month, and day of birth. When asked how closely the horoscope resembled their own personalities, the three groups of students differed significantly. Those who had given no birth information averaged an approval rating of 3.24. Those who had given only the month of birth found the Barnum description on average to rate 3.76, while for those who had revealed their exact date of birth, the approval average shot up to 4.38.
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