psychology

Peer 4

Nick Alum’s, “What makes some people think Astrology is scientific?” takes into account data from a European survey to raise an investigation of why people consider astrology to be scientific and what builds this misconception (2011). The survey reveals that a minority of Americans and a growing majority of Europeans believe astrology to be rather scientific and accredit its work. There has been multiple researches done to evaluate the claims of astrology, but there is not much evidence to prove the claims which raises the concern, if individuals make life changing decisions based solely on astrological signs. There are two main reasons which make pseudoscientific claims appear credible, motivation and cognition, but little is known about what causes the variation in people's belief of astrology being scientific, therefore Nick Alum’s study is conducted to explore and conclude explanations for why various levels of credibility are associated with astrology.

It was hypothesized, the misconception of astrology being scientific arises due to individuals' lack of knowledge regarding the subject. After analyzing a few previous Eurobarometer surveys more specific hypotheses were speculated to conduct further research. The two surveys asked to rate how scientific different subject categories were, one survey used horoscopes while another used the term astrology. When comparing, the varying results of how scientific each seemed to individuals based on the term used led to more specific hypotheses. It was further hypothesized, the suffix ‘ology’ would make people believe astrology is more scientific than horoscopes. Additionally, it was hypothesized that citizens confused astrology for astronomy, hence there should be a correlation to how scientific the two are. Contrastingly, horoscopes and astronomy should not have this positive correlation, since they are considered different. The independent variables were the terminology used such as horoscopes and astronomy as the varying terms are hypothesized to have different scientific value associated with them. Whereas, the dependent variable is the “beliefs of the scientificness of astrology”. To test the hypothesis surveying and content analysis was used since the data for this study came from Eurobarometer 224 and 225 surveys.

The survey asked people to rate how scientific 10 different subjects were on a scale of one to five. Although, in a random order, half of the surveys altered the term, astrology with horoscopes. The results concluded, more people thought astrology to be more scientific than horoscopes. When ordered from most to least scientific according to the results, astrology appeared above psychology and astronomy, while horoscopes appeared at the very bottom with homeopathy and history. Therefore, it was clear to see, people considered horoscopes and

astrology to be different, even though they essentially are the same. Astrology seems more scientific due to the structure of the word when essentially it is the same as horoscopes. Overall, the hypothesis of considering astrology to be scientific due to lack of knowledge is true because if people consider horoscopes to be the least scientific, how is astrology in the top, due to lack of knowledge.

This study gets a good sense of why astrology is wrongfully considered scientific, and what factors such as country of origin and level of knowledge contribute to the misconception. I would like to further explore the reason for the misconception, by conducting an additional experiment. To further see if the terminology affects the connotation assigned with the terms. I would like to conduct another survey where there are the same horoscopes written but with a different starting. One would start like 'Your horoscope says …' and the other would say 'According to Astrology …' and ask which one they are more likely to trust and why and list: is more scientific and seems more scientific. This will provide a further insight as to which word they considered more credible and if they are making an assumption or strongly believe one is better because it is more scientific. I think this will provide clear idea of whether they strongly believe astrology is scientific or are just assuming it is. Additionally, people who assume can be asked to list why and results can be compared to arise more hypotheses as to why people consider astrology to be more scientific without knowing about it.

Reference Allum, N. (2011). What makes some people think astrology is scientific?. Science Communication, 33(3), 341-366.

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