Research* shows that, as an Ask Fuzzy reader, you are versatile and good at many things. You are sociable, express yourself clearly and logically and you are good at problem-solving and numbers.
Phineas Taylor Barnum (1810-1891) was the American showman who may be the origin of the adage "There's a sucker born every minute". He's remembered for hoaxes such as the "Feejee" mermaid, a creature made with the body of a monkey and the tail of a fish.
Barnum understood that, by exploiting the human propensity for irrational thinking, he could trick them.
The Barnum effect (also called the Forer effect) plays on the notion that we are attracted to statements that appear to reveal things about ourselves, especially if they're complementary.
Are you, for example, compassionate and protective of your loved ones? Given that this is true of 96.4% of the population**, it's a safe bet that you are.
We read personal meaning into vague statements. Qualifiers such as "at times" mean they can apply to almost anybody.
The Barnum effect is a trick used by fortune tellers to convey the impression that their insights about you are special.
It's also used in pop psychology, and even in some commercial psychometric tests that claim to profile character types.
Related is that we tend to judge the truth of a statement according to who said it. For example, we are more likely to believe an assertion if it's made by a person with an air of confidence.
Aristotle was alert to this weakness when he classified the form of false logic known as ad verecundiam - an appeal to authority.
A variant is ad populum, which is persuasive because "most people agree...".
More recently we have come to understand the power of tribal thinking, in which we prefer information and opinions from "people like me".
Attitudes to climate change and vaccination are good examples. A person is more likely to dismiss climate change when their peers do.
All this undermines the notion of the "rational" human, wherein a person always pursues the optimal outcome for themselves.
Our rationality is a thin veneer on a primitive brain. Logic is the thing that nature gives us to justify our emotions.
One of the most powerful tools we have to overcome that is the critical thinking provided by science.
- * This is actually from an astrological profile for Gemini.
- ** Research also shows that 86.7% of all statistics are made-up.
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