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The Case of Astrology – The relation between paranormal beliefs and psychological traits: The case of Astrology – Brief report Antonis Koutsoumpis Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Author Note Antonis Koutsoumpis ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9242-4959 OSF data: https://osf.io/62yfj/?view_only=c6bf948a5f3e4f5a89ab9bdd8976a1e2 I have no conflicts of interest to disclose Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: De Boelelaan 1105, 1081HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Email: [email protected] The present manuscript briefly reports and makes public data collected in the spring of 2016 as part of my b-thesis at the University of Crete, Greece. The raw data, syntax, and the Greek translation of scales and tasks are publicly available at the OSF page of the project. An extended version of the manuscript (in Greek), is available upon request. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first public dataset on the astrological and paranormal beliefs in Greek population. Introduction The main goal of this work was to test the relation between Astrological Belief (AB) to a plethora of psychological constructs. To avoid a very long task, the study was divided into three separate studies independently (but simultaneously) released. Study 1 explored the relation between AB, Locus of Control, Optimism, and Openness to Experience. Study 2 tested two astrological hypotheses (the sun-sign and water-sign effects), and explored the relation between personality, AB, and zodiac signs. Study 3 explored the relation between AB and paranormal beliefs. Recruitment followed both a snowball procedure and it was also posted in social media groups of various Greek university departments. The completion of the study took place online and participation was anonymous and voluntary. The samples across the three studies were not independent. Participants were presented with all the three studies and they were invited to complete any number of them (one, two, or three). The number of participants varied from 511 (Study 2) to 217 (Study 3). After data collection, participants were matched across the three studies using the key variables of birthdate, age, gender, and birthplace. The number of participants who participated in all three studies and their data were successfully matched across the three datasets was 156. In the following pages the results are reported separately per study, but the merged dataset can be found at the OSF page of the project. Study 1 – Belief in Astrology, Locus of Control, and Optimism Locus of Control (LoC; Rotter, 1966) is a psychological construct describing the degree to which one attributes the control of their life events to internal or external forces. When an event “is perceived as the result of luck, chance, fate, or under the control of powerful others […] we have labelled this a belief in external control” (pp. 1 ; Rotter, 1966. On the contrary, when “the person perceives that the event is contingent upon his own behavior or his own relatively permanent characteristics, we have termed this a belief in internal control” (pp. 1; Rotter, 1966). Since Astrology asserts that external forces (e.g., the sun, planets, moon) affect personal traits, it was expected that participants who believe in Astrology will tend to have external LoC (Hypothesis 1). For exploratory reasons, the relation between astrological belief and Optimism was also tested without making any specific prediction. Method The recruitment method is described in the Introduction. The sample size was 273 (44 men), and the mean age of participants was 25.44 years (SD = 7.37). Measures Belief in Astrology. Astrological belief was measured in two ways. First, using the Belief in Astrology Inventory (BAI; Chico & Lorenzo-Seva, 2006), which consists of 24 items (e.g., “You can predict what a person is like if you know his zodiac sign”). The scale was translated to Greek by the author. Responses were given in a 5-point scale (1 = completely disagree, 5 = completely agree), with higher scores indicating higher belief in Astrology. The Cronbach’s alpha of the scale was .96. The second measure was a single item Astrology Belief (AB) scale (“Do you believe in zodiac signs?”), and responses were given in a 3-point scale (1 = No/Rather no, 2 = Neither no nor yes, 3 = Yes/Rather yes). Due to a mistake in data collection, 126 participants didn’t indicate their astrological belief in the AB measure. Locus of control. The Greek version of Rotter’s (1966) scale was used to measure Locus of Control (LoC; Fakinos, 1979), which measures the degree to which one believes they have control over the outcomes of their lives (internal locus) or that external forces, beyond their powers, have control over their lives (external locus). The scale consists of 29 forced-choice situations (including 6 filler items), one of which represents internal and the other external LoC (e.g., “Many of the unhappy things in people's lives are partly due to bad luck” – external locus; “People's misfortunes result from the mistakes they make” – internal locus). Scores range from 0 to 1, with higher scores indicating external LoC. Cronbach’s alpha was .72. Optimism. Optimism was measured with the Life Orientation Test (Scheier, Carver, & Bridges, 1994), which consists of 10 items (e.g., “In uncertain times I usually expect the best”), four of which are filler items. The scale was translated to Greek by the author. Responses were given in a 5-point scale (1 = completely disagree, 5 = completely agree), and the Cronbach’s alpha was .81. Openness to Experience. Openness was measured using the items from the Traits Personality Questionnaire 5 (TPQue5; Tsaousis & Kerpelis, 2004), a personality inventory developed to measure the Big-5 personality model in the Greek language. The domain of Openness to Experience consists of 15 items (e.g., “I’m interested in all forms of art”). Responses were given in a 5-point scale (1 = completely disagree, 5 = completely agree), and the Cronbach’s alpha was .45. Results and Discussion Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics and intercorrelations across all variables of Study 1. The BAI scale correlated strongly with the AB single item scale (r = .85, p < .01). BAI (r = .30, p < .01) and AB (r = .27, p < .01) correlated positively with external LoC, suggesting that people who believed that external forces have control over their life, scored higher in astrological belief. Furthermore, BAI correlated positively with gender (r = .24, p < .01). Women scored significantly higher than men both in BAI (mmen 2.03 = , mwomen = 2.60; t270 = -4.12, p < .001) and AB (mmen = 1.70, mwomen = 2.03; t145 = -1.91, p = .058). Finally, external LoC was negatively correlated with Optimism (r = -.36, p < .01), suggesting that people who scored higher in Optimism were more internally locus oriented. Table 1 Descriptive statistics and correlations between measures of Study 1 Mean SD BAI AB LoC Optimism Openness BAI 2.50 0.87 .96 AB 1.97 0.86 .85** - LoC 0.50 0.17 .30** .27** .72 Optimism 3.24 0.77 .05 .06 -.36** .81 Openness 2.65 0.39 .04 .11 .00 .06 .45 Gender 1.84 0.37 .24** .16 .09 .02 -.12* Age 25.44 7.37 -.01 -.09 -.01 .11 .10 *p<.05 **p<.01 Notes. BAI = Belief in Astrology; AB = astrological belief (single item); LoC = Locus of Control; for gender: 1 = men, 2 = women; Cronbach’s alpha boldfaced in diagonal. Study 2 – Sun-sign and Water-sign effect In a controversial study, Mayo, White, and Eysenck (1978) provided empirical support to the “sun-sign effect” – western Astrology’s assertion that people born under odd zodiac signs are more extraverted than those born under even zodiac signs. The study of Mayo and colleagues (1978) was limited in that all participants were clients of the first author, a well-known astrologer, thus all participants probably had some level of belief in Astrology. In a later replication of the study (Van Rooij, Brak, & Commandeur 1988), when knowledge of Astrology was controlled for, the sun-sign effect was observed only for those with high astrological knowledge. The present study tested whether the sun-sign effect holds when belief in Astrology was controlled for. It was hypothesized that zodiac signs and belief in Astrology will interact and affect Extraversion, such that participants born under odd (vs. even) zodiac signs will score higher on Extraversion, but this effect will be significant only for those believing in Astrology (Hypothesis 2). Along with the sun-sign effect, the “water sign effect” was also tested – western Astrology’s assertion that people born under water signs (Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces) are less emotionally stable. It was hypothesized that zodiac signs and belief in Astrology will interact and affect Neuroticism, such that participants born under water (vs. non-water) zodiac signs will score higher in Neuroticism, but this effect will be significant only for those believing in Astrology (Hypothesis 3). Method Recruitment method is described in the Introduction. The sample size was 511 (94 men; 4 didn’t indicate gender), and the mean age of participants was 25.14 years (SD = 7.53). Measures: Belief in Astrology. Astrological belief was measured using the single AB item from Study 1. Due to a mistake in data collection, 159 participants didn’t indicate their astrological belief. Zodiac sign. Participants reported their birthdate, birthplace, and birthtime. This information was used to manually calculate participants’ zodiac sign and ascendant (ascendant was not used in the present analysis). Participants were assigned to odd-even and water-non- water zodiac sign according to their sun sign. Personality. Extraversion and Neuroticism was measured using the Traits Personality Questionnaire 5 (TPQue5; Tsaousis & Kerpelis, 2004), which measures the Big-5 personality model in the Greek language.
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