3 comments

  1. I have the slight hope that perhaps a lot of the respondents did not understand the question correctly. After all, not everyone treats surveys with 100% attention.

    I would love to see the original questionnaire, esp. whether it was obvious that Astrology and not Astronomy was meant — and that the respondents knew the difference between both. Even the description in the article could be mistaken: “astrology, the study of celestial bodies’ purported influence on human behavior and worldly events”. Well, in a way, celestial bodies do have an influence on human behavior and worldly events — from day/night to seasons to “uh, look, an eclipse!”. But that’s a far cry from asserting that being born in a certain zodiac sign influences your personality (self-fulfilling prophecy excluded) or that the phase of the moon influences human behavior (romantic rationalizations excluded ;-)).

    Perhaps putting both Astrology and Astronomy with respective clear definitions next to each other would lead to different results. And perhaps asking respondents whether they read horoscopes or would pay for a “personalized” horoscope would make it even clearer and closer to actual (worrying) behavior.

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