Think fortune telling is accurate? That's the Barnum effect teasing you
Psychological talk
◎Zhu Jie
"Are we really fate?"
"How long will it take to wait for my white moonlight?"
"Is it a good time to break up?"
...
When encountering the above-mentioned relationship problems, some post-90s generations choose to ask online "fortune tellers" for help.
A recent online survey showed that nearly 80% of the respondents had fortune-telling, 90% of whom were born in the 90s. They had fortune-telling on the Internet platform, and most of them were seeking love fortune.
It is said that fortune-telling is superstition and dross, but why do post-90s who are following the fashion trend have a soft spot for it?
Inertia of thinking is good at verifying rather than falsifying
If you want to understand fortune telling, you have to mention the Barnum effect.
This effect means that it is easy for people to believe a general description of personality and feel that it accurately reveals their own personality characteristics, even if the description is empty.
For example, when a fortune teller learns about your birth date, he said in a serious manner: "Have you had a problem with your relationship recently?" If you didn't think carefully, after listening to this sentence, it is easy to say "Too accurate." "The emotion.
But if you think about it calmly, who wouldn't have any interpersonal problems?
It can be seen that the openness of fortune-telling terms greatly broadens its interpretation space, which makes the Barnum effect extremely easy to activate.
In addition, the existence of confirmation bias in human cognition also provides "help" for fortune tellers.
This deviation means that when people accept a certain point of view, in their daily life, they will deliberately choose the information that supports the point of view, and ignore or forget the opposite information.
When a fortune-telling software tells a woman in love: this year your relationship will face a test, this woman is likely to continue to recall events that can confirm this point of view, such as "when dating yesterday, the boyfriend did not seem to pay attention to herself "Wait.
The correctness of the results of fortune-telling can be proved by labeling such events as "faced by the test".
Due to the existence of the confirmation bias, if the woman finally broke up with her partner, she would tend to interpret it as: Sure enough, the fortune-telling is accurate, and I just can't make it through this year.
If she passed the year smoothly, she would not doubt the result of fortune-telling, but would understand it as: Fortunately, she had fortune-telling ahead of time, which allowed her to escape this year.
This shows that if you want to prove a point of view, people can always find a variety of reasons.
This also explains why some people are always fooled by fortune tellers, because the inertia of human thinking is good at verifying rather than falsifying.
Confirm that the bias extends from thinking to behavior
What's more interesting is that confirmation bias can also extend from thinking to behavior.
In order to study the effectiveness of astrology, the famous psychologist Hans Eysenck recruited 1,000 children as survey subjects and assessed their personality.
These children basically do not know the corresponding relationship between personality and constellation. The final questionnaire survey results show that their personality traits are not related to constellations in any way.
But if the subjects are replaced by adults who have knowledge of astrology, the results are surprising: the more familiar the survey subjects are, the better the consistency between their questionnaire results and the personality characteristics of their constellations.
On the contrary, if the subject does not know much about astrology, the degree of agreement with the personality characteristics of the relevant constellation will be lower.
The research reveals another possibility for fortune-telling to be “accurate”, that is, when people put a certain label on themselves, they are likely to “close” to this label and develop corresponding personality traits. I really become a person who fits the characteristics of this label.
Over-reliance on fortune-telling is suspected of evading responsibility
In real life, most people try fortune-telling, at most, to post a picture in the circle of friends, mainly for entertainment.
However, there are also a group of young people whose fortune-telling is not out of fun, but sincerely betting the future on fortune-telling, hoping to help them make decisions on major life issues such as school entrance examinations, job hunting, marriage and love, etc. How should this be understood? ?
Kishimi Ichiro is the author of the best-selling book "The Courage to Be Disgusted". He believes that "the decision itself is not difficult, but the difficulty is to bear the corresponding responsibility after making a decision. People do feel hesitant when thinking about this level." For example, when you reject all opinions, choose to elope with the one you love.
This is of course a romantic matter, but for the parties involved, this decision also contains considerable risks.
Existential psychology believes that freedom and responsibility go hand in hand, and choice must bring consequences, and since it is your own choice, you have to bear the consequences of your choice alone.
In case something goes wrong with this relationship one day, the person concerned will have to shoulder everything and it is hard to blame anyone.
Thinking of this heaviness, many people become hesitant when faced with major choices.
From this perspective, relying too much on fortune-telling to make decisions is likely to be a manifestation of avoiding responsibility.
Psychoanalyst Fromm believes that with the development of socialized production, modern people have more freedom of choice, but this has also increased people's anxiety and insecurity.
This is particularly evident in the issue of marriage and love.
Marriage in traditional society is not free, but it is relatively stable. After all, the main motivation for marriage at that time was to pass on the family line or maintain family interests. Today, love has become a reason for many people to get married, which makes individual dignity greatly respected, but As subjective willingness is more volatile, the risk of breaking up also increases.
Faced with these challenges, individuals will inevitably feel confused or helpless. If they cannot reasonably relieve this anxiety, they will easily commit themselves to fortune-telling in order to avoid choices.
(The author is a national third-level psychological counselor)