Adonis Diaries

Do read your personality traits:

“1. You have a need for other people to like and admire you

2. You have this tendency to be critical of yourself

3. You have unused capacity, which you have not turned to your advantage

4. You have a few personality weakness, but you are able to compensate for them

5. Your sexual adjustment has presented problem for you

6. You are disciplined and have self-control on the outside, but you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside

7. Occasionally, you have serious doubts that you made the right decisions or done the right thing

8. You prefer a certain amount of change and varieties

9. You become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations

10. You pride yourself as an independent thinker

11. More often than not, you do not accept others’ statement without satisfactory proof

12. You realized that it is unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to other on many occasions

13. There are periods and times when you feel to be an extrovert, affable and sociable

14 other times, you feel an introvert, wary and reserved

15. A few of your aspirations are pretty unrealistic

16. Security is very high on your list of goals in life”

On a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being highly accurate, you rated my evaluation as a 4 or 5.

You are not one of the rare people to rank what you read as a 5. Everyone ranked this text as 4 or 5. Why?

1, The statements are general in nature. No specificity involved.

2. Many statements are flattering

3. No negative statement in the text: This is the “feature-positive effect” at play

4. We accept whatever corresponds to our self-image and filter out everything else: this is the “confirmation bias” effect

Astrology, astro-therapy, handwriting analysis, biorhythm analysis, palmistry, tarot card readings, sessions with the dead, reading coffee grinds…

All these charlatan of pseudosciences that work well by applying the 4 behaviors common to us all, ingrained in our unconscious and permitting us to function in our daily life.

Note: The text was crafted by psychologist Bertram Forer in 1948 and used to coin the Forer Effect or Barnum Effect.

A chapter in Rolf Dobelli “The Art of thinking clearly”