Predicting and accepting personality test scores

Three studies are reported concerned with people's perception of their own personality, their acceptance of bogus ‘personality’ feedback, and the relationship between their ‘actual’ personality scores and their willingness to accept bogus feedback. In the first study subjects attempted to predict their own and a well-known other person's personality scores. They were fairly good at predicting some of their own scores (extraversion, neuroticism) but less so others, suggesting that people can recognize their own ‘correct’ personality feedback. In the second study subjects were given either positive (Barnum Statements) or negative (reverse Barnum Statements) ‘bogus’ feedback after a personality test. They tended to accept the positive feedback as more accurate than the negative feedback though this was not related to their actual scores. In the third study subjects were given four types of feedback statements after a personality test: general positive, general negative, specific positive and specific negative. As predicted, people tend to accept general rather than specific, and positive rather than negative feedback as true. Furthermore, acceptance was closely related to neuroticism and extraversion in a predicted direction. These results are discussed in terms of the uses and abuses of validation of personality feedback.     

Accepting personality test feedback: A review of the Barnum effect

This article attempts a comprehensive and critical review of the by-now fairly extensive literature on the Barnum effect—the approval/acceptance by subjects of bogus personality interpretations supposedly derived from standard tests. Since the last major review eight years ago various methodological extensions have occurred and various rival hypotheses for established findings have been proposed. The present review is divided into three major sections: client and clinician characteristics; feedback statements and test format; and implications for personality assessment and measurement. Nearly 50 studies on the acceptance of personality interpretations are systematically reviewed and criticized.     

Paranormal Beliefs and the Barnum Effect

The acceptance phenomenon (i.e., the general tendency for persons to accept almost any bogus personality feedback; Layne, 1979) may be related to certain paranormal beliefs (Alcock, 1981; Hyman, 1981). Paranormal beliefs are beliefs in phenomena that, if authentic, violate basic limiting principles of science (Broad, 1953; Tobacyk & Milford, 1983). One specific illustration of the acceptance phenomenon is the "Barnum effect," which refers to acceptance of bogus personality feedback consisting of relatively trivial statements with a high base rate (Layne, 1979; Snyder, Shenkel, & Lowery, 1977). The Barnum effect has been implicated in personal validation and in "cold reading," both of which are used routinely by many astrologers, clairvoyants, faith healers, fortune tellers, graphologists, mediums, Tarot Card readers, and others (Hyman, 1981). It was hypothesized that paranormal beliefs emphasizing divinatory procedures that produce personalized feedback (i.e., precognition, spiritualism, superstition, and witchcraft) are associated with greater susceptibility to the Barnum effect.     

The Body Image Boundary Construct: A Reply to Fisher and Cleveland

The ability of expert and naive judges to discriminate between genuine and Barnum assessment statements was assessed. In a 2 x 2 x 2 design (naive vs. expert judges, genuine vs. Barnum test statements, sex), judges rated assessment statements for their information value, usefulness, social desirability, and typicalness. Results indicated that judges were able to make expected discriminations between genuine and Barnum statements. These results were discussed in terms of previous findings which have suggested that judges have seen Barnum statements as "accurate" or "good" as genuine statements. In the present study, the discriminations seemed due to the use of a population of judges more representative of clinical assessment consumers and to the more specific judgments required.     

Possible barnum effect in the five factor model: do respondents accept random neo personality inventory-revised scores as their actual trait profile?

This study investigated a possible Barnum effect in personality traits, i.e., that persons accept a false trait profile as correct. Having answered the Norwegian translation of the NEO Personality Inventory-Revised, a group of 75 students, 56 (five women military aviation cadets and 19 (10 women) graduate students, received a random T-score profile and were asked to rate their agreement on a 7-point scale. For all personality traits, i.e., facets and domains measured by the NEO Personality Inventory-Revised, positive correlations ranging from .08 to .64 were found between the agreement ratings and the similarity between the random false scores and the actual scores. The respondents identified and rejected random T scores that deviated far from their actual scores, which works against the Barnum effect. Correct identification correlated negatively with Neuroticism r = -.41) and positively (r = .53) with Conscientiousness.     

When Seemingly Irrelevant Details Matter: Hidden Covariation Detection Reexamined

Hidden covariation detection (HCD) theory states that when personality characteristics are surreptitiously associated with irrelevant features, these features obtain heuristic value for future evaluations of personality characteristics. According to the theory, subjects are not consciously aware of using such heuristics in their evaluations. We tested these hypotheses by confronting participants with statements that were said to belong to separate individuals, in which the apparent level of intelligence was associated with an irrelevant feature of the person who allegedly made these statements. In line with HCD theory, participants appeared to use this association, unconsciously, to guide their subsequent evaluations. Implications of these findings for HCD theory are discussed.     

The universality of generalized personality statements

Researchers for three decades have assumed that generalized personality statements are nearly universally valid. In this study, undergraduate students indicated whether generalized personality statements were "true" or "false" as applied to themselves; then these same students and a group of graduate students estimated the percentage of college students who would answer each generalized statement "true." Only 7 of the 12 commonly-used, generalized personality statements were found to be nearly universally valid among the undergraduates; the other 5 were answered "true" by fewer than two-thirds of the undergraduates. Both groups undergraduates and graduate students were very accurate in estimating the percentage of students who would respond "true" to each statement. Thus, many supposed generalized statements are not nearly universally valid, and students are cognizant of the degree of universality of generalized statements. Results of prior research based on inappropriate assumptions about generalized statements must be viewed cautiously.     

The Relationship Between Rorschach Responses and Attitudes Toward Parents

Effects of self-ideal discrepancy and favorability of content on subjects' acceptance of personality interpretations were studied. Subjects accepted more favorable than neutral statements and more neutral than unfavorable statements. A significant effect was found for self-ideal discrepancy and for the interaction between self-ideal discrepancy and content favorability. In contrast to moderate and low discrepancy subjects, high discrepancy subjects accepted more of the interpretations, accepted more unfavorable, and rejected more favorable interpretations. High discrepancy subjects also accepted more neutral interpretations than did low discrepancy subjects. High discrepancy subjects expected to receive more negative feedback than low discrepancy subjects, and also interpreted this feedback more negatively than did low discrepancy subjects, while scores for the moderate discrepancy subjects were consistently between these two groups.     

Science versus the stars: a double-blind test of the validity of the NEO Five-Factor Inventory and computer-generated astrological natal charts

The authors asked 52 college students (38 women, 14 men, M age = 19.3 years, SD = 1.3 years) to identify their personality summaries by using a computer-generated astrological natal chart when presented with 1 true summary and 1 bogus one. Similarly, the authors asked participants to identify their true personality profile from real and bogus summaries that the authors derived from the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI; P. T. Costa Jr. & R. R. McCrae, 1985). Participants identified their real NEO-FFI profiles at a greater-than-chance level but were unable to identify their real astrological summaries. The authors observed a P. T. Barnum effect in the accuracy ratings of both psychological and astrological measures but did not find differences between the odd-numbered (i.e., favorable) signs and the even-numbered (i.e., unfavorable) signs.     

The ‘healthy’ family*

The importance of concepts and hypotheses about ‘healthy’ families for family therapists is stressed. A number of different approaches to defining ‘health’ is described. Concepts and hypotheses of family therapists from different schools are integrated into a more encompassing theory, thereby focusing on statements with respect to personality, cognition, behaviour, communication, relationship, role, family system and network. It is noted that family therapy literature lacks information about ‘healthy’ families. Moreover, nearly all statements are non-scientific and normative as they are not founded on empirical research.     

Meta-interpretive reliability of computer-based test interpretations: the Karson Clinical Report.

Meta-interpretive reliability is a new method to evaluate the accuracy with which personality trait scores are communicated via interpretive statements in a computer-based test interpretation (CBTI). The prototypic experimental design is based on a two-way repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA); the two effects are personality traits and randomly chosen CBTI protocols. In this application, 101 psychologists read four examples of the Karson Clinical Report (KCR, Karson & O'Dell, 1975) and estimated the original trait scores from the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF; Cattell, Eber, & Tatsuoka, 1970) on which the KCR is based. Estimated trait score variance was significantly related to the Trait x Protocol interaction and the main effects for personality trait and differences among protocols (omega 2 = .55). The total effect size corresponded to a multiple correlation of .74, suggesting that the KCR had acceptable meta-interpretive reliability. The protocol effect denoted a context effect created by the juxtaposition of several interpretive statements. Additional analyses showed that individual differences among raters contributed to less than 1% of the estimated standard ten (sten) score variance. Meta-interpretive reliability is proposed as an index of the upper limit of validity for CBTIs.     

The Conceptual Complexity of Presidents Carter and Clinton: An Automated Content Analysis of Temporal Stability and Source Bias

Previous work on the measurement of leaders' foreign policy orientations by Margaret G. Hermann argues that spontaneous utterances should provide more useful indications of stable personality characteristics than prepared statements. This paper reconsiders this question for Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton through an automated coding system. A large number of spontaneous utterances and prepared statements by these presidents were compared in an effort to determine the stability of their conceptual complexity across source types and over time. The findings support the ability of Hermann's conceptual complexity measurement to capture robust differences between individuals; however, scores derived from spontaneous comments varied significantly from those derived from prepared remarks. In addition, the trait appears to be stable for some subjects (Carter) but not for others (Clinton).     

Two Reagans? Genre Imperatives,Ghostwriters, and Presidential Personality Profiling

Attempts to gauge presidential personality on the basis of speeches and other public statements are subject to several potential validity threats. This paper presents a test of the genre imperative of the tendency to make the president sound "presidential," in combination with the fact that most presidential addresses are drafted by ghostwriters. The test involves comparing the "activity" and "positivity" levels of 235 syndicated radio commentaries that Ronald Reagan wrote and delivered during the years immediately before he became president and 299 weekly radio addresses that he delivered while he was president. The two Reagans were by no means fundamentally different, but the differences between them nonetheless sound a note of caution about basing personality assessments on presidents' public statements.