GENDER AND THE BARNUM EFFECT - A REINTERPRETATION OF PIPER-TERRY AND DOWNEY RESULTS

The Barnum Effect refers to people's acceptance of high baserate, bogu s feedback. Typically sea is not significantly associated with such ac ceptance, but recently Piper-Terly and Downey found that undergraduate women accepted such feedback from friends more than men. They conclud ed that the women in their sam pie did this because they wanted to hel p. i.e., avoid embarrassing, their friends; how ever, this explanation is flawed for two reasons. First, there are other ways to be helpful that would lead to the opposite result; for example, bluntly honest fe edback might be helpful and followed by lower acceptance of feedback. In addition, an alternative hypothesis holds that men and women accept bogus feedback because they are rational. Compared with men, women re veal their reactions and personalities more clearly and thus rationall y rate their friends' feedback on personality as more accurate.