Just in case you didn't know already, there is no way that the position of some huge balls of flaming gas millions of miles away could possibly have any influence on your personality. Nada. None. The fact that the idea has persisted for so long has more to do with a very human need to feel a sense of order and purpose in ourselves and the world. We'd much rather believe that our strengths, weaknesses, and romantic interactions are determined by some cosmic force instead of chance and chaos.


This is an example of one of the many cognitive biases that we human are subject to. Since we are all made of the same kind of squishy meat-stuff, we tend to follow the same patterns of behavior. Next time you're flipping through a magazine and come across the astrology section, don't read your own one. Instead, pick another star-sign at random and read that one. You will most likely be able to relate that information to your own life, just as you would if you were reading your own.

In 1948, psychologist Bertram R. Forer presented his students with the results of the personality test he had given them. Each student was told that they were receiving a unique analysis based on the results, and was asked to rate how well it applied to them, on a scale of 0 (not at all) to 5 (very well). The average rating was 4.26, which means that most of the students agreed with the assessment of their personalities.

So far so good, except for the fact that every single student got the same test results.

"You have a great need for other people to like and admire you. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage. While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them. Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others' statements without satisfactory proof. You have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic. Security is one of your major goals in life."

Sounds pretty applicable, huh? Forer created his 'unique' assessment by culling phrases from various horoscopes. If only he had had word cloud generators in his day. The following picture was taken from information is beautiful.net and was created by inputting 22,000 horoscopes gleaned from Yahoo:


Notice anything in particular? There are very few words that are specific to a particular star-sign; for almost every one, the same words are used over and over again.

If you have been living under a rock for the past ten years and don't know what word clouds are, allow me to explain. You input text into a piece of software, which sorts out the most common words and ranks them by how many times they occur in the text. The biggest words in the cloud are the ones that occur most often. (You can try making your own word clouds here.)

Horoscopes work on generalisations that seem specific; you think that the advice applies to your situation in particular because, deep down, you want it to. But really horoscope writers are just fishing around in the pool of shared human experience. Like Forer and his 'personality test', they couch their advice in the vaguest of terms, knowing that we will fill in the blanks ourselves.

Astrology: exact science or steaming pile of crap?