Reading numerology, tarot or test results usefully, instead of letting them label you

Numerology, tarot, Vietnamese astrology and personality tests have one thing in common: they hand you a mirror with a shape already cut into it. That mirror helps when it lets you name something you half knew. It harms when you use it to explain why you need not change.

This is a general guide for every tool on Thấu Mình. It starts with an experiment from 1948, because that experiment explains why nearly every result feels right.

In 1948, a whole class was fooled at once

Bertram Forer, a psychology lecturer in the United States, gave 39 students a personality test. A week later he handed each a description, supposedly written for them from their answers, and asked them to rate its accuracy from 0 to 5. The average was 4.26.

All 39 were the same description. Forer had assembled it from sentences in an astrology book bought at a newsstand. It included lines such as: you have a great need for other people to like and admire you; you tend to be critical of yourself; outwardly disciplined and self-controlled, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside.

The experiment has been repeated many times, in many countries, with almost the same result. The striking thing is not that students are gullible but that those sentences really are true of nearly everyone. That is the difficulty: a description can be true of you and say nothing in particular about you. The effect later became known as the Barnum effect.

Three questions to ask after any result

• Is this true, or does it just sound nice? Look for one specific example from the last three months. If you cannot find one, set that sentence aside.
• If it is true, do I want to keep it or change it? A named weakness is still a weakness, not a sentence passed on you, and not a licence either.
• Would the people close to me agree? Asking one blunt friend is faster than reading ten more interpretations.

The third question is skipped most often and helps most. Your result is how you answer about yourself. The people who live alongside you have data you lack: they see you when you are not watching yourself.

An example: from result to something you do this week

Say you take the DISC test and come out S: steady, dependable, conflict-averse, finds it hard to say no. You nod along. That is the easiest point to stop, and the least useful.

Go one step further. Is "finds it hard to say no" true? Last week you took on two tasks you should have turned down. So yes, and specifically. Keep it or change it? Change it. Then the thing to do this week is: next time someone asks, answer "let me check my schedule and get back to you" instead of agreeing on the spot. One sentence, one week, one small change you can see.

A good result is one that makes you do a single thing differently this week. If it does not, it was entertainment, which is fine, as long as you know that is what it was.

Separate the two kinds of sentence

Forer's finding has a very practical use. When you read a result, split the sentences into two kinds: those true of you and everyone else, and those true only of you. The second kind is usually much rarer, and only that kind is worth thinking about further. The piece "Which sentences are about you" on this site has a ten-second test for doing exactly that.

And if you find yourself checking the same question several times a day, the trouble is probably not the result but the worry behind it. "When to close this page" was written for that moment.