[Horoscopes, palm readings, personality tests]

[They all claim to describe your true personality]

[We asked some people to write down their date of birth, city of birth, favorite color]

[Here are the results of their personality tests]

Alright guys, thanks for your patience.

I have the results of your personality test based on the information that you gave me.

Now these are customized for each of you so I'm going to ask you as you read the results please keep them to yourselves right now.

Alright, so Abel, Keith, Allison, and Eugene.

Okay.

No peeking. Don't look.

Don't peek at mine.

[So how accurate are the results?]

Uh, yeah, I would say that this is pretty accurate.

A lot of the things in here are like the things that the little voice in the back of my mind says.

So it's really spooky that someone got all this information about me.

Not sure how you can get even a close to accurate reading of someone's sort of personality by you know, things that seem arbitrary like your birthday or the colors you like or where you were born.

Yeah, this is eerily accurate and also my worst fear is realized, the final line cuts me to my core.

It says "Some of your aspirations tend to be unrealistic" which I'd say is my greatest fear always.

That I'm aspiring to things that I don't deserve and that I'm not qualified to do.

Yeah, I feel like most of it is accurate, there's a few things that are, I don't really think are very accurate.

I did have an astrology phase when I was really into astrology but I was always the guy who read every single sign and I always felt like I'm related to something in every sign.

Okay everybody, how did I do?

Was I pretty accurate?

Uh, yeah!

For me it was like, there was like a 80 to 85 percent that I was like "yeah".

And then there was also a line specifically about how I don't accept other people's statements sometimes.

Doesn't anybody want to share some of the specifics, you know, bring them up and we can talk about them.

Yeah, there's one that's, "You also pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept other's statements without satisfactory proof. Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic, you can't...”

Was this like a...

I feel like I have, I have the same stuff.

You have a similar one?

I have the exact same line I have the exact same one

That's pretty funny.

You all have exactly the same feedback.

Wow. What?

Oh, this was a psychological test!

Now listen, this probably felt pretty personal though, right?

I mean two minutes ago felt like it was really about you.

Yeah.

And the reason it feels so personal is that, in fact, it's very very general so it can apply to anybody.

This is called the Barnum effect and this is basically what you would find in a lot of online personality tests, a lot of online horoscopes or newspaper horoscopes.

In fact, every single sentence in what you got at one time or another was in a horoscope.

We‘ve been hoodwinked! We've been fooled!

I wasn't quite hoodwinked.

You were!

I was completely!

I was like, "pretty good job!"

You almost made me cry, almost.

I never buy into, like, horoscopes stuff, so like this, I was like "Oh man, this is so right! What am I doing? How can you gather this information?"

Of course they couldn't, it's fake!

But I think that what this taught me is that all the time people try to tell me what type of person I am and I tend to believe them but I shouldn't.

The whole experience is making me question every quiz I've ever taken, especially that "Which Meryl Streep Character Are You?"

So I guess I'm not that much Devil Wears Prada as I thought I was.