Barnum and the “Barnum” Effect 1

Running head: BARNUM AND THE “BARNUM” EFFECT 1 Barnum and The “Barnum” Effect Jamey Sweet Trinity Western University BARNUM AND THE “BARNUM” EFFECT 2 Barnum and The “Barnum” Effect Intro Peanut shells. Elephants. Colorful Tents. Acrobatics and death-defying acts. Have I got your attention yet? Bearded women. Mermaids. Tiny people and beautiful voices. Doesn’t this sound spectacular? It also sounds like the circus, a place of entertainment and showmanship. While there have been many players that participated in the birth and the growth of the circus, there haven’t been many who became such a world-wide personality as Phineas Taylor Barnum. Men such as Philip Astley birthed the circus with equestrian shows in the 18th century, but in the 19th century as Barnum began traveling under the colorful tent, the circus evolved with the addition of the Sideshow. While PT Barnum is largely associated with the circus, a wider look on his life can reveal business talent, especially in the entertainment industry. Barnum had used advertising and marketing to his advantage like no one else before him, and yet still proclaimed to hold to some of the business ethics of previous century. His pride and glory, other than his family, was the American Museum, which was an exhibition of oddities, curiosities, and sensations, some of them being human exhibits. This foundation provided a launchpad into the circus industry. Who was Phineas Taylor Barnum? Why was he so “successful” in his field? What are his drives, motivations, and passions that got him up in the morning? Was he happy? What happened in Barnum’s failures in life and how did they affect him? As we explore the biggest personality of the 19th century, we may uncover that this self-proclaimed “Humbug” has a personality that is hard to pin down among all of his personas. The “Barnum” Effect BARNUM AND THE “BARNUM” EFFECT 3 Before we get into how personality theory plays into PT Barnum’s life, let’s look how PT Barnum plays into personality theory. In social media today, we can easily find a post or advertisement that looks something like this “What Star Wars character are you?” or “What character do you act like when you get mad?” While these tests don’t seem to have any validity to them, they are fueled by what is called in the realm of personality psychology, “The Barnum Effect.” This effect refers to how PT Barnum would use any methods to present appealing entertainment to the populace, whether what was presented was legitimate or not. Therefore, Barnum called himself a “Humbug” as he defined “Management-Tact-To take an old truth and put it in an attractive form” (PT Barnum: Fiction VS FACT, 2018). Whether we are looking at Barnum’s entertainment marketing methods, social media identity tests, or certain personality tests, this effect can be seen. When looking specifically at personality tests, we live in an age where we want to find out more about ourselves because we find it difficult to find out own identity. Personality tests, such as MBTI, gain interest and attraction because of the populace’s need for identity. Whether or not the tests are valid are a different matter, but the effect itself creates in these tests something that it simply is not. Personality tests do not define identity, since that is as unique as we can get. The Film The recent film “The Greatest Showman” portrayed the life of PT Barnum in a musical format. However, the movie itself is quite inaccurate. It tells the story of a man who lives with the inferiority of station for his life until opportunity strikes and he uses creativity and ingenuity to create a community of outsiders. The true story of PT Barnum is much more complex and his superiority complex plays much more of a role in his life as a driving force to make him work BARNUM AND THE “BARNUM” EFFECT 4 hard. However, the movie is accurate to the spirit of PT Barnum, “The King of Humbug.” The movie took the condensed history of Barnum’s life and changed them and presented them in a form that was attractive to the modern-day audience. His Story In looking at the life of PT Barnum, we will primarily be looking through the lens of Erik Erikson’s Identity Theory. While I will be delving into Adler’s Superiority Complex, B.F. Skinner’s Reinforcement Theory, Horney’s Neuroticism and Competitiveness, and Marvin Zuckerman’s Sensation Seeking Theory, Erikson’s theory provides a base foundational structure from which to work with. In Erikson’s “Identity and the Life Cycle,” the theorist writes, “I shall present human growth from the point of view of the conflicts, inner and outer, which the healthy personality weathers, emerging and re-emerging with an increased sense of inner unity, with an increase of good judgment, and an increase in the capacity to do well, according to the standards of those who are significant to him” (Erikson, 1980). As we move through the life of Phineas Taylor Barnum, we shall structurally move from one stage of conflict to the next, since the theory shows a person’s natural progression in life. Oral Sensory – Birth to Age 1 Phineas Taylor Barnum was born in Bethel, Connecticut on July 5th, 1810. In my sources, there isn’t much data in this age range given the time that has passed since his birth. The only thing that is written is that Barnum’s mother made notice of the noise he made in his first hour and she had told him that “she has never been able to discover any cessation since” (Barnum, 2018). While there is no data in this age range, we can make assumptions as to how Barnum resolved the Erikson conflict of “Trust vs. Mistrust” based on his behavior in later stages. In this BARNUM AND THE “BARNUM” EFFECT 5 conflict between choosing trust over mistrust, we don’t see a man who assumed a maladaptive way of coping in either direction. Instead we see a man balancing the extremes, especially in the realms of business. When starting out as a store clerk, he learned pretty quick that there were customers that you were straight with and customers that were trying to sell rat fur as beaver fur. He also trusted people such as Joice Heth and the previous owner of the Feejee Mermaid as to the integrity of their claims. When it comes to this conflict, the strength that comes out of it when done right is Hope, and PT Barnum always had Hope of a brighter future. Muscular-Anal – Ages 1-3 As before, there is little data for this age. But like before, we can assume how Barnum resolved this conflict by his behavior in later stages. This stage is marked by motion and autonomy and the strength that is gained when this conflict is resolved is will. On the reverse side of this conflict is doubt and shame. There are many things that we can say about Mr. Barnum, but the least of which is that he suffered with doubt or shame. If anything, his autonomy and will got him into trouble because of his shamelessness. But it also made him a force to be reckoned with. Locomotor-genital – Ages 3-5 PT Barnum, in his autobiography “The Life of P.T. Barnum,” gives three measly paragraphs for the first 5-7 years of his life. What he says about these years is “my grandfather crammed me with sugar and loaded me with pennies, to buy raisins and candies, which he always instructed me to solicit from the store-keeper at the ‘lowest-cash price’” (Barnum, 2018). If we were to look here for the resolution for the Initiative vs. Guilt conflict, we can see that at a young age, Barnum is already being taught how to barter and it is rewarding since he can buy more candies for a lower price. Using B.F. Skinner’s Reinforcement Theory in these years with BARNUM AND THE “BARNUM” EFFECT 6 these specific instances, we can see that the businessman in Mr. Barnum could have been built into him at a young age. The reinforcement theory says that our personality is a make-up environmental conditioning. In Barnum’s case, the environmental conditional here would be his grandfather encouraging him to barter for the lowest price for candy which then gave him more candy. Latency – Ages 6-11 This stage of conflict is marked by the strength Competence and the conflict is Industriousness vs. Inferiority. While we can look in later years to see how he resolved the conflict, there are events within these years that can point to how he resolved this conflict. First, the young student was an excelling academic in school, yet he grew tired of hard labor, especially since his father (who was a tailor, a farmer, and a tavernkeeper at times) would keep him out of school to do work. But it also just didn’t suit him, and he became lazy. His father found him a job as a store clerk in a general store. He found himself liking the work with a pencil behind his ear and selling goods. He grew competent and resolved the conflict by becoming quite industrious. It would manifest in how he did business. It sometimes even got to the point of ruthless. The second event that impacted Barnum was the tales of Ivy Island. His hometown was a place of pranksters, especially in his family.

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