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Abstract

The Barnum Effect refers to people's acceptance of high baserate, bogus feedback. Typically, sex is not significantly associated with such acceptance, but recently Piper-Terry and Downey found that undergraduate women accepted such feedback from friends more than men. They concluded that the women in their sample did this because they wanted to help, i.e., avoid embarrassing, their friends; however, this explanation is flawed for two reasons. First, there are other ways to be helpful that would lead to the opposite result; for example, bluntly honest feedback might be helpful and followed by lower acceptance of feedback. In addition, an alternative hypothesis holds that men and women accept bogus feedback because they are rational. Compared with men, women reveal their reactions and personalities more clearly and thus rationally rate their friends' feedback on personality as more accurate.

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Gender and the Barnum Effect: A Reinterpretation of Piper-Terry and Downey's Results

Abstract

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