Some people are told from an early age that their birth date is incredibly important. The position of the stars around that date will influence their fate. They then might check horoscope predictions regularly to figure out how their day, week, month, or year will go. With their fate already written in the stars, the zodiac can correctly interpret and predict various aspects of life, like happiness, love, health, and finances.
It’s all bogus if you ask me. Common sense dictates that zodiac signs can’t possibly impact one’s life or predict their future. Nor can they explain failures and successes, past or present. I don’t need scientific evidence to believe that.
It turns out there is a new study that aims to prove that zodiac signs mean nothing, beyond all reasonable doubt. Researchers showed no correlation between astrological signs and one’s well-being. Of course, people who are into astrology will tell you that they must be such Capricorns.
Mohsen Joshanloo of Keimyung University and the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Wellbeing Science published the new study in the journal Kyklos, and it was relayed by PsyPost.
This isn’t the first study to try to prove whether or not astrology works. But previous studies, regardless of whether they tried to debunk or prove zodiac claims with scientific findings, faced criticisms. As PsyPost notes, some of those studies had a small sample size of participants. Critics also pointed to methodological weaknesses.
Meanwhile, some 30% of Americans believe in astrology and the influences of one’s sign on their well-being.
That’s why Joshanloo set out to address any criticism from the start. He used a massive, nationally representative sample combined with statistical methods to determine the links between the zodiac and well-being.
For the sample, the researcher used data from the General Social Survey (GSS) from nearly 13,000 participants. The GSS is a periodic survey that collects data about a wide range of topics from US residents. Joshanloo analyzed data from the four most recent GSS waves, including 2016, 2018, 2021, and 2022.
The sample included a diverse population with an average age of 50 years and a slight majority of women (55%).
Joshanloo determined their zodiac signs and then examined eight outcome variables tied to well-being: General happiness, depressive symptoms, psychological distress, work satisfaction, financial satisfaction, life excitement, general health, and marital happiness.
Using various statistical methods, the scientist proved that zodiac signs had no statistically significant effect on seven out of the eight outcomes above. The only exception was financial dissatisfaction, for which he found a significant effect. But even so, the scope of the effect was negligible.
Joshanloo went one step further, creating a random variable and comparing its predictive power to the power of the zodiac signs for well-being outcomes. The results were similar. The scientist did not observe differences between the variable and those signs in predicting well-being events.
“These results indicate that consulting astrological signs tells us just as little about a person’s level of well-being as simply putting them into a category based on a coin flip or rolling dice,” the researcher said, per PsyPost.
Joshanloo further concluded that the general public should be aware of the lack of evidence supporting astrological beliefs.
So what’s the deal with Capricorns?
Then again, nobody will stop you if you choose to believe in horoscopes, or if you like reading predictions about your sign that might sometimes match your personality and real-life events.
I do not believe in astrology, but I have nothing against Capricorns or other signs. I picked Capricorn to make a point. After all, you can find astrology readings to explain anything. For this article, I searched for zodiac signs least likely to believe in astrology. Bustle mentioned three: Virgo, Capricorn, and Aquarius.
The full study is available at this link. Your daily horoscope, meanwhile, can be found wherever there’s an internet connection.
