Forer Effect

Amazing as grad life can be, a integral part is watchin online series like Friends (too old now), Lost, Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, Life on Mars, The Family guy (though i still have to watch the last two) . . . and then movies..

I recently was taking to friend of mine who stayed in the same colony back home as mine.....and we did had a good interaction before comming to US...but eventually as dumb ass as i can be, I hardly called him...he surprisingly called up during the spring break one day and we spoke as if we had just left for US yesterday...

Now hes a very organized and orderly person (unlike me), so I thought that he must be busy doin exams and other x-curricular academic activities (which he actually is doin)...but then he lamented about the time he wastes some times a week watching all those above serials....when i told him, I too-like other normal grad beings watch these....n he was relieved to hear that, as if a supereme court judge pardoned him off a crime after being accused by all the base courts had accused him of murder!!

Comming back to my purpose of this post, the recent one I am watchin is the Big Bang Theory . . and as hilarious it can be with prodigies like Sheldon and Leonard quibbling over 'banal and trite situations' using erudite vocabluary, they do shell out many thoroughly researched (thanks to the Dr David Saltzberg a UCLA physics and astronomy professor who actually checks the scripts for veracity and producers Lorre/Prady) topics and concepts.

One such concept struct me intriguing was the 'Forer effect'. Now it almost made me stop the episode and google 'forer effect'. I was surprised to see my fundamentals shocked.........

Now the Forer effect goes like this:

The Forer effect (also called personal validation fallacy or the Barnum effect after P. T. Barnum's observation that 'we've got something for everyone') is the observation that individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. The Forer effect can provide a partial explanation for the widespread acceptance of some pseudosciences such as astrology and fortune telling, as well as many types of personality tests.

I am a strong follower of astrology and the signs descriptions...(almost addicted to check them every day and hate fr doin that...) but then its a good way to remember birthdays too...which many people do aggree. . .

But the Forer effect has been statistically proved correct (statistically significant) even when the experiment has been repeated 100's of times but the result has alwayz been the same.....putting a big realization on me about the complacency we seek through astrology and daily forcasts....

GOSH!!!!!