The Effect of Horoscopes on Women’s Relationships

An experiment was designed to try to find out whether women’s relationships are affected by what they read in their horoscopes. Forty-six female undergraduates were randomly assigned to two groups. One group was given a horoscope that contained positive love advice; the other neutral love advice. All participants completed an Astrology Awareness Questionnaire. Questionnaires concerning the women’s relationships were completed both before and after they received the horoscopes, with about six weeks between the two. Scores on the relationships questionnaires did not change after the neutral advice, and were slightly (though not significantly) higher after the positive love advice. Levels of knowledge of and belief in astrology were high, but very few subjects said they would change their behaviour according to what they read in their horoscope.

Posted in Free Research Abstract

Tampering with birth dates should occur morer often among rural than urban people. Scrutiny of Geoffrey Dean’s paretal tampering claim (1)

Geoffrey Dean claims that parents of Gauquelin professionals, guided by superstition, tampered with birth dates and birth times of their children when they gave their obligatory reports at registration offices (Dean, 2000). In his view, therefore, Gauquelin planetary effects might be “man made” to a large extent, or even entirely, due to the parents’ efforts to enhance their children’s fortunes and to banish possible misfortune . Dean used four “avoidance” variables (unlucky day avoidance, new Moon avoidance etc) and four “preference” variables (lucky day preference, full Moon preference etc.) as superstition indicators. I tested the validity of these variables by dividing the French Gauquelin professionals N= 7,952) into seven sub-samples of equal size sorted by birth place population. Dean’s avoidance and preference indicators should be more pronounced in rural (small population) compared with urban samples (large population) because popular beliefs flourish in rural life while fading away with urbanization. The indicators did not show the expected decline across samples from urban to rural birth places. This result casts considerable doubt on Dean’s alleged superstition variables upon which his enterprise is grounded.

Posted in Free Research Abstract

Sociability and Astrology: Analysis of the Results of a Psychological Test

The aim of this study is to compare sociability scores with the birth time in calendar and seasonal months of a population of 524 students (Ss) of an average age of 22.09 years, by using the Eysenck and Wilson psychological test. The position of the Sun in eleven out of the twelve zodiacal signs corresponds significantly to alternations of higher and lower sociability for the odd and even signs of the zodiac respectively, this being in conformity with astrological tradition. On the other hand, a significant sinusoidal evolution (COSINOR) in sociability scores appears with a maximum in Libra which can explain the very low score of Aries because of the position of the minimum of the curve at the level of the sign (p<0.05). These results seem to validate the astrological zodiacal signs.

Posted in Free Research Abstract