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 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.
Mindhacks recounts a study in which each of a group of students was hown what was portrayed as her individual personality profile and asked to rate how accurate it was. In fact, each student was given the same profile, the one quoted above. Nearly all of the students rated it as highly accurate. The tendency for people to take vague outlines and bend them to fit their view of themselves has since been called the Forer effect, after Bertram Forer, the author of the study.

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November 19, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Benjamin Steele
The Forer effect is interesting, but it doesn’t disprove the research done on personality. Also, related to personality, there is the distinction between optimists and pessimists which has been a major focus of research. As I recall, pessimists have better ability to perceive present conditions objectively. So, this would imply they’d be less influenced by the Forer effect.
November 23, 2009 at 2:45 pm
fl
I don’t get it. You give statements that are general enough to apply to a wide range of people. Then, a wide range of people consider that the statements apply to themselves. Unless people tell you that those statements DON’T apply to most people, you can hardly call the result of this experiment surprising.
November 26, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Personality Types « 36 Chambers – The Legendary Journeys: Execution to the max!
[…] Filed under: deep philosophy — Kevin Feasel @ 10:36 pm About a week ago, Jeff Ely had a post entitled “Is This Your Personality Type?” Nearly everybody rated a particular profile as highly accurate. I, naturally, had to go through […]