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10 - The Mould of You

I was born under the sign of Sagittarius. What can you tell about me?

Generally, one would guess a Sagittarian to be independent, strong-willed, open-hearted, generous, truthful, and have an insatiable thirst for adventure. The one who is more knowledgeable in astrology would say my favourite colour is light blue, my gem is topaz, and my ideal lover is born under the sign of Aquarius - you know, one of those Feb-born intellectual deep thinkers.

If those are your guesses, then guess what: you are mostly correct. Mostly.
And guess what: you are also more or less correct if you apply those guesses to anyone else.

When I was in undergrad, I had a chronically skeptical friend. For unknown reasons, he actually dated a lovely lady who was into astrology and mysticism. Through this strange couple, I was introduced to some interesting mystical topics, and their psychological explanations or rebuttals. Barnum effect was among the most interesting ones.

Barnum effect essentially means we tend to believe that general statements describing majority of the population as particularly true for our individual case. This effect was documented in the classic psychological experiment by psychologist Bertram R. Foyer in 1948. In this experiment, 39 students took part in a "personality test" and were given a "personalised" description of their personality. Then, they were asked to rank the accuracy of the description from 0 to 5. The average ranking was 4.3. The twist of the story is that all students were given THE SAME DESCRIPTION, containing following items from a random astrology book: 

-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.
-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.

Do you see yourself in them?
Does this mean we are collectively gullible?
Perhaps. Not necessarily.

Instead of negativity, I like to think of this effect as a message of hope, a celebration of our individuality. Growing up, we are always assigned to moulds and patterns one way or another. These moulds can disguise themselves as expectations of parents, legacy of the family, or social norms and standards. Astrology descriptions, while flattering, are essentially expectations on how we should be, simply because we were born in a particular time of the year. The Barnum effect, in my opinion, is liberating as it questions one of those moulds.

You can be independent, you can be strong-willed, you can be generous, you can be selfish, you can be moved by intellectual discussions, you can have insatiable thirst for adventure. You can, simply because you are you, because you are a human. And as a human, you have the dignity to choose who you are.

Sigmund Freud - the founding father of psychoanalysis - once asserted, "Let one attempt to expose a number of the most diverse people uniformly to hunger. With the increase of the imperative urge of hunger all individual differences will blur, and in their stead will appear the uniform expression of the one unstilled urge.". However, from the depth of hell - places like Dachau, Auschwitz - we know that human can still rise above their situation to do the right thing. They still have a choice.

Isn't that hopeful?