Giving high accuracy ratings to personality descriptions that are supposedly tailored specifically to you, but are actually vague enough to apply to a wide range of people, is known as the Forer effect.

A closer look

Giving high accuracy ratings to personality descriptions that are supposedly tailored specifically to you, but are actually vague enough to apply to a wide range of people, is known as the Forer effect. Psychologist Bertram Forer proved this in 1948 by giving his students a personality test and then handing them all the exact same generic paragraph of results, which they universally rated as highly accurate. This specific cognitive blind spot is the entire structural foundation of astrology, tarot readings, and corporate personality quizzes. The human ego is so phenomenally desperate to feel seen and unique that it will take a wildly generic statement like 'you have a great deal of unused capacity' and wholeheartedly believe it was written specifically for them by the cosmos. We are all essentially paying psychics and online quiz sites to validate our own narcissism, happily ignoring the fact that the same generalized fortune applies to literally everyone on the planet