Bertram R. Forer

Bertram R. Forer (born October 24, 1914 in Springfield , Massachusetts , † April 6, 2000 ) was an American psychologist . He is known for describing the Barnum effect , which is also called the Forer effect after him.

Forer was born in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1914. He studied psychology at the University of Massachusetts and the University of California, Los Angeles . During World War II he worked in a military hospital in France, later he worked as a psychologist in Los Angeles in a psychiatric clinic for war veterans and in his own practice in Malibu (California) .

In his classic 1948 experiment, Forer pretended to do a personality test on his students. He then allegedly handed them the evaluations and asked them to rate the truthfulness with values ​​from 0 (= does not apply at all) to 5 (= applies very well). Although all evaluations contained exactly the same text, Forer had compiled it from a horoscope available at the kiosk , the students gave an average of four points. The experiment was repeated and confirmed countless times.

The Forer Effect shows that people tend to validate generalized character descriptions, although they can apply to almost everyone around them as well. The reason for this is that we want results or predictions to match our own properties and ideas. This experiment is considered fundamental for assessing psychological tests .

See also

• Selective perception

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• BR Forer: The fallacy of personal validation: A classroom demonstration of gullibility . In: Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology . tape 44 , 1949, pp. 118-123 .
• BR Forer: Personal validation and the person. In: Psychol Rep. 23 (3), Dec 1968, p. 1214. PMID 5717433
• BR Forer, NL Farberow, MM Meter, RS Tolman: Consistency and agreement in the judgment of Rorschach signs. In: J Proj Tech. 16 (3), Sep 1952, pp. 346-51. PMID 14946755
• Obituary (English) UMassMag, Winter 2001.