Your health, prosperity and love-life can be foretold in just around 100 characters – whether you’ll fail or succeed, if you should seek romance or lie low for some time. Your future foreseen with the touch of a button. These predictions are all over the media and are growing exceedingly accessible to anybody who will believe them.
I’m talking about daily horoscopes.
Some people wake up on Monday morning and read their weekly or daily horoscope. They get this general idea of what is expected to happen to them. They fall victim to confirmation bias: when the thing happens, they try to find similar elements of the horoscope and real life and freak out because “it all lines up.” It’s kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The problem is, unlike the general personality description of astrological signs, these daily fortunes are inconsistent and usually written for the media.
WikiHow actually has a step-by-step article on how to write your own horoscope. The first step is to make general statements like “a very interesting financial transaction is heading your way.” It’s hard to tell if this article is laced in sarcasm, or if it’s genuinely trying to assist people in writing horoscopes. Either way, it’s very telling of just how easy it is to write one.
They don’t take into account your age, culture, environment and experience. They’re written by people who probably just want to keep you feeling positive, or like you can something to look forward to # which isn’t a crime, it’s just something to take a bit more lightly.
Don’t get me wrong, I love knowing peoples’ astrological signs. Realizing you match the general descriptions and adjectives of your sign is pretty interesting. And honestly, now that I’m aware of our supposed compatibility, I understand the way my friendships and relationships have carried out. I really want to believe it’s all true.
Sure, there’s astrology behind all of this, and placements of the sun, moon and stars. And then there’s the supposed “lunar effect.” But, it would be remiss to not mention that multiple studies have been done and have disproven the accuracy of daily, monthly and general life horoscopes.
Others have found, however, that the majority of people fit the personality details of their astrological sign. Which is pretty cool.
I guess it’s all up in the air, left for interpretation. If you want to believe that your daily horoscope will foretell the rest of your day, it’s not going to hurt you. Just try not to mold your life to make something happen that, based on science, isn’t really all that accurate.
