Throughout my research, I used a tried-and-true strategy of asking a series of questions about attitudes and activity while omitting any reference of belief. The image that emerged is far more complicated than the basic division between belief and doubt suggests.
In one of my groups of predominantly male students aged 18 to 21, I discovered that 70% of them read a horoscope column once a month and valued its advise 51% of the time. Other questions revealed a wide range of responses: 98 percent of people knew their sun sign, 45 percent said it reflected their personalities, 25% felt it can make accurate forecasts, and 20% believe the stars have an impact on life on Earth. The higher percentages are comparable to prior study that revealed 73 percent of British adults believe in astrology, while the lower ones are comparable to Gallup polls.
Other questions about the pupils’ behavior and attitudes were also posed. Nearly half (45%) admitted to researching possible or actual partners’ sun signs in order to better manage their relationships, and 31% admitted to reading their astrological predictions for the coming year.
What became clear from all of my surveys is that when we ask questions about personal experience, meaning, and behavior (such as valuing an astrologer’s advice or learning about partners’ signs), positive responses are roughly twice as high, if not more, than when we ask for statements of objective fact (such as “I value an astrologer’s advice” or “I value an astrologer’s advice”) “Is astrology a reliable source of predictions?).
My samples were limited, and each one offered a snapshot of a certain group, making generalization impossible. However, they all suggest that when we ask a range of questions, we get a diversity of answers. How many people do you know that believe in astrology? It’s possible that it’ll be 22%. It’s possible that it’s 73 percent. What I refer to as the difference between the two figures is what I refer to as the “The zone of doubt and uncertainty between deep and shallow commitment is known as the belief gap.
So, what is it that makes people believe in astrology? The issue we have is establishing trustworthy research. If we can’t get to first base and figure out how many people believe in it, attempts to figure out why they find it significant a better word than belief will be fruitless.
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Is there anyone out there who believes in astrology?
Christine Smallwood’s fascinating piece, “Astrology in the Age of Uncertainty:
Astrology is currently experiencing widespread popular acceptability that has not been seen since the 1970s. The transition began with the introduction of the personal computer, was expedited by the Internet, and has now reached new levels of speed thanks to social media. According to a Pew Research Center poll from 2017, about a third of Americans believe in astrology.
Astrology, like psychoanalysis before it, has infiltrated our collective vernacular. At a party in the 1950s, you could have heard someone talk about the id, ego, or superego; now, it’s normal to hear someone explain herself using the sun, moon, and rising signs. It isn’t just that you are aware of it. It’s who’s saying it: folks who aren’t kooks or deniers of climate change, who don’t find a conflict between utilizing astrology and believing in science…
I ran a short Google search and discovered the following Pew report from October 2018:
The religion breakdown was the only thing that surprised me about this table.
I had the impression that mainline Protestants were the rational ones, but they believe in astrology at the same rate as the overall population.
But, hey, I guess they’re ordinary Americans, so they have average American ideas.
Only 3% of atheists believe in astrology, which is also unexpected.
This makes sense, yet it seemed reasonable to me that someone may not believe in God but believe in other supernatural things: in fact, I could see astrology as a type of replacement for a traditional religious system.
But it appears that is not the case.
Brian Wansink has been compared to an astrologer who can make astute observations about the world based on a combination of persuasiveness and qualitative understanding, and then attributes his success to tarot cards or tea leaves rather than a more practical ability to synthesize ideas and tell good stories.
Does Brian Wansink, on the other hand, believe in astrology?
What about Marc Hauser, Ed Wegman, Susan Fiske, and the rest of the bunch who call their detractors “second-string, replication police, methodological terrorists, Stasi, and so on?”
I doubt they believe in astrology because it symbolizes a rival belief system: it’s a business that, in some ways, competes with rah-rah Ted-talk science.
I wouldn’t be shocked if famous ESP researchers believe in astrology, but I get the impression that mainstream junk-science supporters in academia and the news media feel uncomfortable discussing ESP since its research methods are so similar to their own.
They don’t want to be associated with ESP researchers because it would devalue their own study, but they also don’t want to put them under the bus because they are fellow Ivy League academics, so the safest plan is to remain quiet about it.
The greater point, however, is not astrology believing in and of itself, but the mental state that allows individuals to believe in something so contrary to our scientific understanding of the world.
(OK, I apologize to the 29% of you who don’t agree with me on this.)
When I return to writing on statistical graphics, model verification, Bayesian computation, Jamaican beef patties, and other topics, you can rejoin the fold.)
It’s not that astrology couldn’t be correct a priori:
We can come up with credible hypotheses under which astrology is real and amazing, just as we can with embodied cognition, beauty and sex ratio, ovulation and voting, air rage, ages ending in 9, and all the other Psychological Science / PNAS classics.
It’s just that nothing has come up after years of rigorous research.
And the existing theories aren’t particularly convincing: they’re speculative world models that may be good if the purpose was to describe a real and enduring occurrence, but they’re less so without actual data.
Anyway, if 30% of Americans are willing to believe such nonsense, it’s no surprise that a significant number of influential American psychology professors will have the kind of attitude toward scientific theory and evidence that leads them to have strong beliefs in weak theories with no supporting evidence.
Indeed, not only support for specific weak theories, but support for the fundamental principle that pseudoscientific views should be treated with respect (although, oddly enough, maybe not for astrology itself).
P.S.In defense of the survey respondents (but not of the psychology professors who support ideas like the “critical positivity ratio,” which makes astrology appear positively sane in comparison), belief in astrology (or, for that matter, belief in heaven, gravity, or the square-cube law) is essentially free.
Why not believe these things, or not believe them?
Belief or denial in evolution, climate change, or unconscious bias, on the other hand, can have social or political consequences.
Some opinions are purely personal, while others have a direct impact on policy.
I have less patience for famous academic and media elites who aggressively support junk science by not just expressing their trust in speculative notions supported by no real data, but also attacking those who point out these emperors’ nudity. Furthermore, even a hypothetical tolerant, open-minded supporter of junk sciencethe type of person who might believe in critical positivity ratio but actively support the publication of criticisms of that workcan still cause some harm by contaminating scientific journals and the news media with bad science, and by promoting sloppy work that takes up space that could be used for more careful research.
You know how they say science corrects itself, but only because individuals are willing to correct themselves?
Gresham’s law is also true, but only when people are willing to distribute counterfeit notes or money they think is counterfeit while keeping their lips shut until they can get rid of their wads of worthless stock.
P.P.S.Just to be clear:I don’t think astrology is a waste of time, and it’s possible that Marc Hauser was onto something real, even while faking data (according to the US government, as mentioned on Wikipedia), and the critical positivity ratio, ovulation, voting, and all the rest…
Just because there isn’t enough evidence to support a theory doesn’t mean it’s untrue.
I’m not trying to disprove any of these assertions.
All of it should be published someplace, along with all of the criticism.
My issue with junk science proponents isn’t simply that they advocate science that I and others perceive to be rubbish; they can also be wrong!
However, they consistently avoid, deny, and oppose valid open criticism.
P.P.P.S.Remember that #notallpsychologists.
Of course, the problem of junk research isn’t limited to psychology in any way.
Professors of political science, economics, sociology, and history, to the extent that they believe in astrology, spoon bending, or whatever (that is, belief in “scientific paranormalism as describing some true thing about the natural world, not just a “anthropological recognition that paranormal beliefs can affect the world because people believe in it), this could also sabotage their research.
I suppose it’s not such a big problem if a physicist or chemist believes in these things.
I’m not attempting to shut down study into astrology, embodied cognition, ESP, beauty-and-sex-ratio, endless soup bowls, spoon bending, the Bible Code, air anger, ovulation and voting, subliminal smiley faces, or anything else.
Allow for the blooming of a thousand blooms!
Given that a sizable portion of the populace is willing to believe in scientific-sounding notions that aren’t backed by any good scientific theory or evidence, it should come as no surprise that many professional scientists hold this viewpoint.
The repercussions are especially evident in psychology, which is a vital field of study where theories can be hazy and where there is a long legacy of belief and action based on flimsy data.
That isn’t to say that psychologists are awful people; they’re merely working on difficult challenges in a field with a long history of failures.
This isn’t a critique; it’s just the way things are. Of course, there is a lot of excellent work being done in the field of psychology. You’ll have to work with what you’ve got.
Is astrology a reliable source of information?
Astrology is a collection of belief systems that assert that there is a connection between astrological phenomena and events or personality traits in the human world. The scientific community has dismissed astrology as having no explanatory power for describing the universe. Scientific testing has discovered no evidence to back up the astrological traditions’ premises or alleged effects.
Do people in the United States believe in astrology?
While an increasing number of persons in the United States are religiously unaffiliated, one belief appears to unify a sizable portion of them: astrology. According to a recent YouGov poll, a little more than a quarter of Americans (27%) believe in astrology, with 37 percent of persons under 30 believing that the position of the stars and planets effects people’s lives. Approximately half of Americans (51%) say they don’t believe in astrology, while 22% are undecided.
Younger Americans are more likely than older Americans to claim they believe in astrology. While 37% of individuals under 30 say they believe in it, only around half of those aged 65 and over say they do (16 percent ). Women are slightly more likely than men to say they believe in astrology (30%). (25 percent ). White Americans (25%) are slightly less likely than Black (31%) and Hispanic (32%) Americans to believe that the stars and planets influence their conduct.
Only 29% of Americans with a high school diploma or less believe in astrology, which is the same percentage as those with a college diploma (28 percent ). People with a higher education (24%) are slightly less likely to say they believe. Americans in the Northeast (32 percent) and West (29 percent) are slightly more likely than those in the South and Midwest to believe in astrology.
Catholics (31%) are the most likely to believe in astrology, followed by agnostics (30%) and persons who have no religious affiliation (28%) among the religious groups studied. Protestants (22%) and Jewish Americans (22%) are slightly less likely to believe. Atheists are the least likely of all the demographic groups we studied to believe that the stars and planets have an impact on human behavior (only 10 percent say they believe this).
We also discovered that the gender disparity widens with age: males under 45 are marginally more likely than women of the same age to believe in astrology (38 percent vs. 32 percent), whereas elderly women are substantially more likely than older men to believe. Women between the ages of 45 and 64 are more than twice as likely as men in the same age group to say they believe (29 percent vs. 15%), and women 65 and older are more than twice as likely as men in the same age group to say they believe (23 percent vs. 9 percent ).
When asked if they know what your astrological sign is and given a choice of 12 signs, 90% of Americans choose one, while 10% indicate they don’t know. While persons under 30 are more likely to believe in astrology, they are also less likely to know their astrological sign. Compared to 94 percent of persons 45 and older, 82 percent believe they know their sign. Women (92%) are more likely than males (87%) to recognize their sign, while Democrats (95%) are more likely than Republicans (86%) to recognize it.
While tens of millions of Americans believe in astrology, how willing are they to vote for a political candidate who believes in it? People frequently claim that knowing that a politician is a strong believer in astrology makes no difference to them (40 percent say this). Only 7% say they would be more likely to vote for the politician if they knew this information, while 34% say they would be less likely to vote for the candidate if they knew this information.
People who believe in astrology feel that a politician who practices it extensively would make them more likely (21%) or less likely (22%) to vote for them. Almost half of those polled (46%) feel it makes no difference. Over half of those who don’t believe in astrology (54%) say that if a candidate claims to believe in it, they will be less likely to vote for them (just 2 percent say it would make them more likely to and 34 percent say it would make no difference). Republicans (48%) are more likely than Democrats (35%) to say that a candidate’s astrology beliefs would make them less likely to vote for them, while Democrats are more likely than Republicans to think it would make no difference (43 percent vs. 35 percent ).
This poll’s toplines and crosstabs are as follows:
Do you believe in astrology or that the positions of the planets and stars have an impact on people’s lives?
Would you be more or less likely to vote for a politician who claimed to be passionate about astrology?
Methodology: YouGov conducted this Daily Agenda poll online on April 21-22, 2022, with a nationally representative sample of 3,472 U.S. adults. Based on gender, age, race, education, census region, and political party, the samples were weighted to be typical of the US population.