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Have you ever glanced over at the horoscope column in a newspaper or magazine just for

"fun" or out of curiosity? Do you even deliberately look for it each day?

Do you really believe that half a billion people in the world are going to have the same

day/week/month? (Because your horoscope isn't exactly personalized - it applies to a twelfth of

the world's population).

Horoscope writers use a lot of tricks to make you believe what they've said.

A famous experiment was carried out in 1948, by the psychologist Bertram R. Forer. He

gave his students a personality test, then gave them all exactly the same "results" (which he'd

assembled from horoscopes):

You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical

of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate

for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage.

Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the

inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done

the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when

hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker;

and do not accept others' statements without satisfactory proof. But you have found it unwise to

be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable,

while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to berather unrealistic.

The students were asked to rate the personality profile's accuracy from 1 to 5, with 5

being the most accurate rating. Guess what? The average rating was 4.26 -- despite the fact that

every single student had received exactly the same rating. This has been dubbed the Forer effect,

and it's been borne out by study after study ever since 1948.

You might be reading this and thinking "but, my horoscope has come true on several

occasions!" Well, I'm afraid that's just an example of subjective validation - which means you

pick up on co-incidences and assign them an incorrect meaning. This particularly happens when

it's something that has personal meaning to you: when you want it to be more than a co-

incidence.

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