The Forer effect is a term that refers to the observation or study that is carried out on a person when he accepts as correct a statement about himself, since it is thought that it results from a reliable source, that is, people fall into the deception of personal validation, accepting as their own all information that may be directed to any subject.
The name of the creator of the forer effect is the psychologist Bertram R. Forer, who discovered through an experiment that many people accepted the personal descriptions that appeared as true. For example, in personality tests.
This experiment was carried out in the year 1948 and consisted of taking a sample of students and applying a personality test to them and then giving them a list of statements as the final result of the evaluation, asking them to analyze these results, to verify if they were true or not.. What the students never imagined was that they all had the same result. Each response was rated on a scale from 0 to 5, with 5 being the highest score. The experiment showed that the class evaluation was 4.26, showing with this that all of them considered what they said there was correct and that what they said actually determined their personality.
Since then this study has been done many times and the result is always the same.
When applying this evaluation, it is necessary to bear in mind two important elements: that the data or specification that is delivered is fundamental and valuable, intensely realizing the existing proportion between positive and negative characteristics. The second element is that the individual must believe in the person who is conducting the study.
It is very important that people do not get carried away by the so-called pseudosciences (for example, tarot reading) or the tests that appear in magazines, where they make them think that the results that appear there determine the personality of the person who performs it. The best thing to do for a person who needs advice or help is to see a professional, that is, a therapist or psychologist who is trained to do so.
