Astrology: A Believable Illusion
Astrology is defined as a type of divination that involves the forecasting of earthly and human events through the observation and interpretation of the fixed stars, the Sun, the Moon, and the planets. The practice has been around in various forms for thousands of years. More recently, the New Age movement of the 1960s and ’70s came with a heaping helping of the zodiac.
In a research about astrology and science, it is said that astrologers cannot predict future events, or predict personality based on the time and place of birth, or whether couples have compatible star signs. However, there are still many people who tends to believe in them.
There are several reasons why people still believe in astrology:
1. Humans are narrative creatures
Humans like narratives for making sense of the world and themselves. They are constantly explaining their lives and selves by weaving together the past, present, and future. Based on this phenomenon, astrology easily enters human life. Just like what Monisha Pasupathi, a developmental psychologist at the University of Utah, said that astrology provided people a very clear frame about it.
2. Response to stress and anxiety
When someone is under condition of high stress, they tend to turn into astrology and use it as an advice. This is nothing new. Back then during the 2008 financial crisis, when all plans do not go according to expectations and instead show the opposite, people try to find astrologers to foretell their future.
3. People dislike uncertainty
A new study shows that uncertainty is even more stressful than knowing something bad is definitely going to happen. This makes people most likely need predictions and astrology helps them to get it. An astrologer Jonathan Cainer, who writes horoscope columns for The Daily Mail said, “If they’re going through a time of disruption, they suddenly start to take what’s written about their sign much more seriously.”
4. Astrology gives a sense of control
Rachel Sewell, a Public Relations Manager who checks her horoscopes regularly said that astrology gave her an irrational kind of hope that when she read that a positive change is going to happen in her life, it reinforced a sense of control in the future. Also for some people, a not-good prediction can help them to control their behaviour so those unwanted events will not actually happen.
Despite all those reasons, astrology is still an illusion that cannot give accurate predictions. There is absolutely zero evidence that astrology can predict anything. Christopher French, Professor of Psychology at University of London, gives an explanation of the reason people believe in astrology, namely because “anything that appears to provide a glimpse of what is waiting around the next corner may give someone a better sense of control, even if that sense of control is illusory.”
-Northern Ingo-
