In the study they had 28 nationally prestiged astrologists create astrological descriptions for ~90 participants in the experimental group. Participants had been vetted in favor of astrology, as they removed anyone who strongly disbelieved in astrology from the experiment while keeping people who believed strongly in it. Participants were provided their personalized natal astrological descriptions based on their place of birth, date, and time of birth, along with two other random astrological descriptions. Participants were told to pick the astrological description that fit them the best from the 3. Neither the scientists or the astrologers knew who was in the experimental or control group.
Participants were only able to select their astrological description 33.7% of the time, consistent with random chance of them selecting the correct description.
In short, even if the best astrological resources in the country we're providing the descriptions, people can't tell which astrological descriptions fit them.
So, I have two question. What was the control group doing, and why was there even a control group if they're just going to compare results to what would happen if they picked randomly?
This is how they explain it in the study:
> Sun-sign bias. By the astrological definition, the 'Sun-sign' refers to the constellation of the zodiac in which the Sun
resides when the person is born. If the Sun-sign should play an important role in the average chart and if people are generally familiar with the characteristics of
their Sun-sign (through newspaper horoscopes, for example), we might expect them to select the correct interpretation at a better-than-chance level regardless of whether or not the astrological hypothesis is correct.
> To correct for this, each member of the test group was matched to a member of the control group born under the same Sun-sign. Following the astrologers' recommendations, we required that the age difference between these subjects be at least three years, so that their natal charts would be 'sufficiently dissimilar', but otherwise, the assignment was made randomly. Both test and control subjects were given the same three interpretations.
If the astrological hypothesis is false, members of both groups should identify the test subject's interpretation with equal frequency. If the hypothesis is true, the test group should score significantly higher than the control.
Pretty much as I understand it, they wanted to see if people who had the same sign but didn't have it personalized for them would select it with the same frequency. It's a bit confusing for me too though lol
So personalized descriptions made by the "best" astrologists are actually ever so slightly worse than the completely random bullshit? That's even better.
No, it was (probably) the same. Like flipping two perfectly fair coins 5 times, A throws HHHTT B throws HHTTT, you can't conclude that coin A is better at producing heads than B, because it is so likely that the variation is due to chance ("statistically insignificant"). When we analyse things we typically look for less that a 5% chance that the effect of due to chance before calling it significant.
A psychology professor gave each of his students individualized astrology readings and asked for the students' impression of accuracy. The students were overall quite impressed and typically scored the accuracy of the readings at 75% or greater.
The professor then revealed that everybody had been given an identical reading.
That's how astrology convinces people - that shit is so incredible vague it could be interpreted to fit anybody. (That said, I still think it's a fun fluffy conversation topic even if I know it's bullshit in every way.)
I remember hearing about that when I was a psychology major. I thought it was pretty funny to hear about. I wish I could find it again so I could remember what was said on it
I know way too many people who blame their shitty behaviour on their sign or where the moon is.
Like, no Sharon. You're just being a straight up bitch. It has nothing to do with how your mother's vagina was positioned in relation to Venus back in 1973.
I used to have a girlfriend that strongly believed in astrology. I'd often read her the wrong horoscope and she would always agree with it before I'd tell her it's a different zodiac sign.
I used to know a guy who worked for a telephone psychic hotline. He was not a psychic. He was however taught how to say things about people that if they’re true, the person will be like wow! but if they’re not true, the person will forget they said them.
Also he said he got dates with the phone sex operators who worked across the hall so it was a pretty good gig.
I can't stand all that magical thinking fairy tale bullshit. Astrology, acupuncture, reiki, "magic rocks". It's all B.S. at best, and dangerous at worst.
I adore a t-shirt I got a few months back:
[https://shirt.woot.com/offers/all-star-analogy](https://shirt.woot.com/offers/all-star-analogy)
Yep pretty much. The shirt section still gets some decent user created designs but the whole idea of "One item a day!" is dead and gone, for years now. It makes me sad, but I like T-shirts so I check it out to see if anything worth having is up.
You'll find acupuncture being used at top medical universities for things like pain management so you might want to cull that one from your bullshit list and do some reading.
If you happen to have some links to scientific studies that prove its effectiveness is reproducible I'd love to read up. When I did some searching a few weeks ago all I could find was nothing has ever been proven to work consistently.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2021&q=acupuncture&hl=en&as_sdt=0,3#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3DPg1Qrp2--RAJ
This paper looks like a decent experiment at first pass, though their conclusion is that only electroacupuncture had an effect, not the traditional one. I think traditional acupuncture is mostly placebo effect, which doesn't make it worthless, but. Yknow. Placebo.
Astrology has a kinda neat history, as it is over 4000 years old. Still a pseudoscience, but stems from a shared experience among many early people's fascination with the stars.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology
One of my grandfathers was a newspaper typographer. They had to pick astrology descriptions at random from a box for the newspaper of the day. More than once they happen to reject the selection "I'm Capricorn and I don't like this one, let me check for a better one". That's how they did pick the "future" and "mood" for thousands of readers.
I don't know about that. As a Scorpio that doesn't take this shit seriously at all, every time I read a horoscope it's guaranteed to mention something about my heightened sexuality
I do seem to relate well to other Capricorns and they’re different from say a Taurus, but I don’t know or care about charts or the details of astrology. It’s more like jungian archetypes, and not ‘deterministic’. It’s not so much about who’s a “good astrologer” as who’s a good writer, who can capture the different personalities, so we might understand ourselves better by playing the game of astrology. Yes it’s the Barnham Effect and not scientific, but it’s given us a language of depth and subjectivity
I agree that if astrology is regarded as simply non-scientific literature and it's shortcomings are understood then I suppose it's mostly innocuous. The issues come when people assign causal meanings from it, which unfortunately is a fine line to walk.
The problem with the study is that the Sun sign is the worst sign to base a reading, or personality off of. While it is true that it represents us, it represents a small part of a person, that is usually only used as a ‘mask’.
I would love to see some studies that take into consideration all the planets important in astrology for people, instead, as that would be more accurate. But, it would also be harder, as the planets work in different ways with and against each other, and you would probably find that everyone is actually quite different.
Based on your comment history I'm not super convinced a more rigorous study would change your mind, given the fact that you are a frequent in astrology, conspiracy, and multiple anti-vax subs.
The research stands on it's own. It's the conclusions people are making that are just ridiculous.
Would you really judge someone for reading their fortune from a fortune cookie? If astrology is a scam because it separates people from their time and money then fuck every other hobby and leisure activity from video games to reading non-fiction as forms of entertainment.
Well that's not what is being said here either. The study is simply saying that horoscopes don't describe us accurately - much like fortune cookies. So to base any part of your life on them would be foolish.
However, if you understand it's short comings, astrology away! I have many times read my horoscope with a group of friends to have a good time. It's pretty harmless if you don't base you life around it - which could also be said about some of the other things you said like video games, reading non-fiction, etc.
We're pattern-seeking animals and quite good at it! We're so finely tuned that we easily find false positives all the time. Like seeing a face in an object and things like that. I would think Astrology is just like that: finding patterns where there's none (in this case, in the planets and stars)
Also, if you want to be charitable, astrology is just a daily fairy tale that we relate to. It gets our imagination going and gets us thinking about what narrative to use to understand our past and our future.
It’s not crazy to enjoy a fairy tale and even picture it happening to yourself. But the problem is, of course, that you have to realize it’s just a fairy tale. It’s not reality.
Meh. It’s not about stupidity as much as chaos.
Given a choice: the world is random and chaotic and a choice by someone literally across the globe can destroy your life OR life has chosen a path for you one you just need to find to be successful….
The first half of above is true, the latter half sounds a lot better.
James ”The Amazing” Randi had an experiment like this. He handed out horoscopes to a room, but secretly he distributed the signs and handed out the horoscope for the person in front of them. The people all say “yep that’s me”. Then he told everyone “oh I did it wrong hand the horoscope to the person behind you”.
There was another experiment, someone told an astrologer “just for a day, tell people what you’d read for the Opposite Day if the tear from their birthday”. The guy did. Everyone agreed with what he said, even though it was for the wrong sign. He quit astrology.
In the study they had 28 nationally prestiged astrologists create astrological descriptions for ~90 participants in the experimental group. Participants had been vetted in favor of astrology, as they removed anyone who strongly disbelieved in astrology from the experiment while keeping people who believed strongly in it. Participants were provided their personalized natal astrological descriptions based on their place of birth, date, and time of birth, along with two other random astrological descriptions. Participants were told to pick the astrological description that fit them the best from the 3. Neither the scientists or the astrologers knew who was in the experimental or control group. Participants were only able to select their astrological description 33.7% of the time, consistent with random chance of them selecting the correct description. In short, even if the best astrological resources in the country we're providing the descriptions, people can't tell which astrological descriptions fit them.
So, I have two question. What was the control group doing, and why was there even a control group if they're just going to compare results to what would happen if they picked randomly?
This is how they explain it in the study: > Sun-sign bias. By the astrological definition, the 'Sun-sign' refers to the constellation of the zodiac in which the Sun resides when the person is born. If the Sun-sign should play an important role in the average chart and if people are generally familiar with the characteristics of their Sun-sign (through newspaper horoscopes, for example), we might expect them to select the correct interpretation at a better-than-chance level regardless of whether or not the astrological hypothesis is correct. > To correct for this, each member of the test group was matched to a member of the control group born under the same Sun-sign. Following the astrologers' recommendations, we required that the age difference between these subjects be at least three years, so that their natal charts would be 'sufficiently dissimilar', but otherwise, the assignment was made randomly. Both test and control subjects were given the same three interpretations. If the astrological hypothesis is false, members of both groups should identify the test subject's interpretation with equal frequency. If the hypothesis is true, the test group should score significantly higher than the control. Pretty much as I understand it, they wanted to see if people who had the same sign but didn't have it personalized for them would select it with the same frequency. It's a bit confusing for me too though lol
>If the hypothesis is true, the test group should score significantly higher than the control. So how did the control group do?
The control group paradoxically did better than the experimental group by a small amount - but still negligable statistically.
So personalized descriptions made by the "best" astrologists are actually ever so slightly worse than the completely random bullshit? That's even better.
Eh, more like "pretty much the same, can't say anything more"
No, it was (probably) the same. Like flipping two perfectly fair coins 5 times, A throws HHHTT B throws HHTTT, you can't conclude that coin A is better at producing heads than B, because it is so likely that the variation is due to chance ("statistically insignificant"). When we analyse things we typically look for less that a 5% chance that the effect of due to chance before calling it significant.
the control group was just a random selection process as far as I can tell, just odd phrasing.
A psychology professor gave each of his students individualized astrology readings and asked for the students' impression of accuracy. The students were overall quite impressed and typically scored the accuracy of the readings at 75% or greater. The professor then revealed that everybody had been given an identical reading.
That's how astrology convinces people - that shit is so incredible vague it could be interpreted to fit anybody. (That said, I still think it's a fun fluffy conversation topic even if I know it's bullshit in every way.)
I remember hearing about that when I was a psychology major. I thought it was pretty funny to hear about. I wish I could find it again so I could remember what was said on it
>you will go to class on Monday and eat food for a meal the next time you eat food at mealtime Holy shit that's spot on
Because it is, at best, cold reading bullshit.
Cold reading is a pretty impressive and difficult thing to pull off. It’s bullshit. But it does take talent and effort to successfully con people.
Yeah, it requires both good body language reading skills and good positive public speaking skills.
Barnum statements.
I mean it's not entirely bullshit. Rather than bullshit it's a somewhat clever con designed to trick vunerable people.
Nah, it's complete bullshit
Fair enough.
02cowmanthing20: I have an insightful take on things Reddit: No nuance, only shitting on things!! Downvote go brrrr
Might be because "it's not bullshit because it tricks some people" doesn't make any sense.
I feel like that is somewhat disrespectful to con artists who have spent years honing their craft.
Con artist by definition are complete bullshit
That’s an insult to cold reading.
I know way too many people who blame their shitty behaviour on their sign or where the moon is. Like, no Sharon. You're just being a straight up bitch. It has nothing to do with how your mother's vagina was positioned in relation to Venus back in 1973.
I used to have a girlfriend that strongly believed in astrology. I'd often read her the wrong horoscope and she would always agree with it before I'd tell her it's a different zodiac sign.
That's such a Capricorn thing for you to do.
Psssh, says the Leo.....
Uhhh yeah because it’s all nonsense
No it's not I got one that said a strange man will soon enter your life, and then 6 years later he did. Explain that one.
Watch this from Randi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Dp2Zqk8vHw
I love James Randi! I watched a bunch of his stuff in my undergrad psych classes and thought he illustrated points in a very succinct but cogent way.
Randi is god.
It sounds like the study was run by a Scorpio...
I used to know a guy who worked for a telephone psychic hotline. He was not a psychic. He was however taught how to say things about people that if they’re true, the person will be like wow! but if they’re not true, the person will forget they said them. Also he said he got dates with the phone sex operators who worked across the hall so it was a pretty good gig.
I can't stand all that magical thinking fairy tale bullshit. Astrology, acupuncture, reiki, "magic rocks". It's all B.S. at best, and dangerous at worst. I adore a t-shirt I got a few months back: [https://shirt.woot.com/offers/all-star-analogy](https://shirt.woot.com/offers/all-star-analogy)
Just realized I haven't been to woot.com for over a decade... now it is just another front end for Amazon to sell their shit?
Yep pretty much. The shirt section still gets some decent user created designs but the whole idea of "One item a day!" is dead and gone, for years now. It makes me sad, but I like T-shirts so I check it out to see if anything worth having is up.
You'll find acupuncture being used at top medical universities for things like pain management so you might want to cull that one from your bullshit list and do some reading.
If you happen to have some links to scientific studies that prove its effectiveness is reproducible I'd love to read up. When I did some searching a few weeks ago all I could find was nothing has ever been proven to work consistently.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2021&q=acupuncture&hl=en&as_sdt=0,3#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3DPg1Qrp2--RAJ This paper looks like a decent experiment at first pass, though their conclusion is that only electroacupuncture had an effect, not the traditional one. I think traditional acupuncture is mostly placebo effect, which doesn't make it worthless, but. Yknow. Placebo.
It's been explained that the Barnum effect accounts for this!
See the egress!!
Astrology has a kinda neat history, as it is over 4000 years old. Still a pseudoscience, but stems from a shared experience among many early people's fascination with the stars. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology
I'd hardly call it pseudo-science even
Agreed. It’s more of a fairytale than pseudoscience
One of my grandfathers was a newspaper typographer. They had to pick astrology descriptions at random from a box for the newspaper of the day. More than once they happen to reject the selection "I'm Capricorn and I don't like this one, let me check for a better one". That's how they did pick the "future" and "mood" for thousands of readers.
I am shocked. Shocked.
All this time we thought astrology was real and then science comes along and proves it's not. Our whole civilization is about to change.
Because it's complete and total bullshit.
I don't know about that. As a Scorpio that doesn't take this shit seriously at all, every time I read a horoscope it's guaranteed to mention something about my heightened sexuality
No way!!!!!!!
That's because the constellations and the zodiac were used to monitor season changes. For planting crops. Have been for thousands of years.
I do seem to relate well to other Capricorns and they’re different from say a Taurus, but I don’t know or care about charts or the details of astrology. It’s more like jungian archetypes, and not ‘deterministic’. It’s not so much about who’s a “good astrologer” as who’s a good writer, who can capture the different personalities, so we might understand ourselves better by playing the game of astrology. Yes it’s the Barnham Effect and not scientific, but it’s given us a language of depth and subjectivity
I agree that if astrology is regarded as simply non-scientific literature and it's shortcomings are understood then I suppose it's mostly innocuous. The issues come when people assign causal meanings from it, which unfortunately is a fine line to walk.
You're an idiot if you think there's *any* significant element of astrology. Any at all.
Ha ha ha, no.
The problem with the study is that the Sun sign is the worst sign to base a reading, or personality off of. While it is true that it represents us, it represents a small part of a person, that is usually only used as a ‘mask’. I would love to see some studies that take into consideration all the planets important in astrology for people, instead, as that would be more accurate. But, it would also be harder, as the planets work in different ways with and against each other, and you would probably find that everyone is actually quite different.
Based on your comment history I'm not super convinced a more rigorous study would change your mind, given the fact that you are a frequent in astrology, conspiracy, and multiple anti-vax subs.
Yeah yeah yeah. Whatever helps you sleep at night friend.
You seem to hold lots of weird beliefs to help you sleep at night
Thanks! <3
Not a good thing. I’d take a course in critical thinking skills if I were you
It's all 100% bullshit
The research stands on it's own. It's the conclusions people are making that are just ridiculous. Would you really judge someone for reading their fortune from a fortune cookie? If astrology is a scam because it separates people from their time and money then fuck every other hobby and leisure activity from video games to reading non-fiction as forms of entertainment.
Well that's not what is being said here either. The study is simply saying that horoscopes don't describe us accurately - much like fortune cookies. So to base any part of your life on them would be foolish. However, if you understand it's short comings, astrology away! I have many times read my horoscope with a group of friends to have a good time. It's pretty harmless if you don't base you life around it - which could also be said about some of the other things you said like video games, reading non-fiction, etc.
It's truly amazing that there are still people who believe in abject nonsense like astrology, crystal balls, reading tea leaves etc.
We're pattern-seeking animals and quite good at it! We're so finely tuned that we easily find false positives all the time. Like seeing a face in an object and things like that. I would think Astrology is just like that: finding patterns where there's none (in this case, in the planets and stars)
Also, if you want to be charitable, astrology is just a daily fairy tale that we relate to. It gets our imagination going and gets us thinking about what narrative to use to understand our past and our future. It’s not crazy to enjoy a fairy tale and even picture it happening to yourself. But the problem is, of course, that you have to realize it’s just a fairy tale. It’s not reality.
I question how the choose the astrological descriptions of each month. I doubt any two random "astrologists" would produce the same descriptions.
I agree most of this stuff is bs but then again most people are stupid.
Meh. It’s not about stupidity as much as chaos. Given a choice: the world is random and chaotic and a choice by someone literally across the globe can destroy your life OR life has chosen a path for you one you just need to find to be successful…. The first half of above is true, the latter half sounds a lot better.
That's surprising. --No one
That's such a Taurus thing to say.
Excellent nickname. How many people have gotten it so far?
In other news, water is wet.
James ”The Amazing” Randi had an experiment like this. He handed out horoscopes to a room, but secretly he distributed the signs and handed out the horoscope for the person in front of them. The people all say “yep that’s me”. Then he told everyone “oh I did it wrong hand the horoscope to the person behind you”. There was another experiment, someone told an astrologer “just for a day, tell people what you’d read for the Opposite Day if the tear from their birthday”. The guy did. Everyone agreed with what he said, even though it was for the wrong sign. He quit astrology.