Your life in stars
Although about a quarter of Americans swear by astrology and its potential to shape lives, science is still not convinced. In fact, the idea that celestial bodies can significantly influence our lives or that a zodiac sign plays a role in defining a person’s basic characteristics seems so absurd that most people reject it outright.
That’s not to say, however, that there haven’t been attempts to empirically validate astrology. Although it’s difficult to get funding for it, studies have consistently shown that astrology is a hoax. The latest attempt comes from researchers led by Spencer Greenberg of Clearer Thinking, a startup that uses research into human behavior to develop tools to help people achieve their goals.
Earlier this year, Greenberg and colleagues conducted a small study for the first time in which they attempted to predict 37 facts about people’s lives based on their astrological sun signs.
“While personality tests could predict these facts quite well, zodiac signs could not predict a single one of them,” Greenberg wrote on X.
As you can imagine, these results sparked fierce criticism. In response to criticism from astrologers of previous research, the team developed a new study. This time, with the help of six expert astrologers, the study was designed so that the predictions take into account a person’s entire astrological chart.
A new study, this time with experts
The study then involved 152 experienced astrologers, each of whom was given a lot of information about twelve real people. The personal information included answers to 43 questions about each person’s life and personality, as well as five complete astrological charts. The astrologers had to determine the person’s true birth chart – the other four were decoys. The astrologers believed they could accomplish this task far above chance. The results, however, told a different story.
“One of the most fundamental claims of astrology is that a person’s birth chart contains information about his or her life and character. If this is true, astrologers should be able to correctly predict a person’s chart with a far higher probability than by random guessing,” Greenberg wrote.
Despite their confidence, the astrologers as a group performed at a level indistinguishable from chance guesses. On average, they were correct on 2.49 out of 12 matches, which is close to the 2.4 correct matches one would expect by chance. No astrologer managed to guess more than 5 matches correctly, although many believed they did significantly better.
“The nice aspects of this study design are that (1) if astrology doesn’t work, it’s impossible for astrologers to get better results than random guessing. And that (2) astrologers only need to get slightly better results than random guessing for the study to come to a positive conclusion for astrology.”
“So how did the astrologers do overall? If they had answered just 23% of the questions correctly (slightly more than the 20% of random guesses), the study would have been in favor of astrology. But the performance of the astrologers as a group was indistinguishable from that of the random guesses,
Even those who called themselves world-class experts did not perform any better than amateurs. Moreover, there was little agreement among astrologers about which horoscope suited which person, further calling into question the consistency of astrological interpretations.
Although the study was designed with the help of astrologers and focused on a central proposition of astrology, it found that astrologers could not demonstrate any ability to match individuals to their birth charts beyond chance. This suggests that astrology does not have the predictive power that its practitioners claim. This is supported by another phase of the study, which found that the expert astrologers had very little agreement on the correct birth chart.
“To my great surprise, astrologers had very little agreement about individual people’s horoscopes. When astrologers randomly selected horoscopes, they agreed 20% of the time. In our study, even the most experienced astrologers agreed only 28% of the time.”
“In summary, the 152 astrologers, although they believed they could do it, apparently lacked the ability to match people to their astrological charts,” Greenberg wrote.
The study’s methods and conclusions were published on the Clearer Thinking website. The researchers also published the same questions they used in the study for you to test yourself with.
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