Study Finds Professional Astrologers' Predictions No More Accurate Than Random Guessing
Professional astrologers' predictions of people's personalities and natal charts, i.e. the position of the planets at the time of their birth, were no more accurate than random guessing. The researchers published these results on the Clearer Thinking website.
The researchers decided to approach astrology from a scientific point of view: they asked astrologers what information about a person is needed to correctly determine their natal chart. Based on this information, they developed a test in which a group of astrologers participating in the study were asked to match the personalities of 12 people with one of the proposed natal charts.
Despite their high confidence in their abilities, none of the 152 astrologers who took part in the study were able to correctly match more than half of the people with their natal charts. Moreover, astrologers with the most experience agreed with each other in their predictions in less than a third of the cases.
On average, astrologers gave the correct answer in 2.49 cases out of 12, which is no more accurate than a random guess. None of the astrologers could answer all the questions correctly, or at least more than five of them, and experience in astrology did not improve the accuracy of the predictions. Thus, the researchers were able to cast serious doubt on the claim that information about a person's character or life can be learned from that person's natal chart.