Scientific analysis and criticism
What two forms of confirmation bias are under study with respect to astrological belief?
Astrology
Astrology Astrology and science Confirmation bias Confirmation bias Psychokinesis
Astrology-Scientific_analysis_and_criticism Astrology_and_science-Psychology_and_sociology Confirmation_bias-Persistence_of_discredited_beliefs Confirmation_bias-Individual_differences Psychokinesis-Explanations_in_terms_of_bias
Astrology has been rejected by the scientific community as having no explanatory power for describing the universe. Scientific testing of astrology has been conducted, and no evidence has been found to support any of the premises or purported effects outlined in astrological traditions. There is no proposed mechanism of action by which the positions and motions of stars and planets could affect people and events on Earth that does not contradict well understood, basic aspects of biology and physics. The majority of professional astrologers rely on performing astrology-based personality tests and making relevant predictions about the remunerator's future. Those who continue to have faith in astrology have been characterized as doing so "in spite of the fact that there is no verified scientific basis for their beliefs, and indeed that there is strong evidence to the contrary". It has also been shown that confirmation bias is a psychological factor that contributes to belief in astrology. Confirmation bias is a form of cognitive bias. From the literature, Astrology believers often tend to selectively remember those predictions which have turned out to be true, and do not remember those predictions which happen to be false. Another, separate, form of confirmation bias also plays a role, where believers often fail to distinguish between messages that demonstrate special ability and those which do not. Thus there are two distinct forms of confirmation bias that are under study with respect to astrological belief.
It has also been shown that confirmation bias is a psychological factor that contributes to belief in astrology. Confirmation bias is a form of cognitive bias. From the literature, astrology believers often tend to selectively remember those predictions that turned out to be true, and do not remember those that turned out false. Another, separate, form of confirmation bias also plays a role, where believers often fail to distinguish between messages that demonstrate special ability and those that do not. Thus there are two distinct forms of confirmation bias that are under study with respect to astrological belief. The Barnum effect is where people accept unclear expositions of their personality if there is the appearance of some complex process in the derivation of the personality profile. If more information is requested for a prediction, the more accepting people are of the results. In 1949 Bertram Forer conducted a personality test on students in his classroom. While seemingly giving the students individualised results, he instead gave each student an identical sheet that discussed their personality. The personality descriptions were taken from a book on astrology. When the students were asked to comment on the accuracy of the test, more than 40% gave it the top mark of 5 out of 5, and the average rating was 4.2. The results of this study have been replicated in numerous other studies. The study of this Barnum/Forer effect has been mostly focused on the level of acceptance of fake horoscopes and fake astrological personality profiles. Recipients of these personality assessments consistently fail to distinguish common and uncommon personality descriptors. In a study by Paul Rogers and Janice Soule (2009), which was consistent with previous research on the issue, it was found that those who believed in astrology are generally more susceptible to giving more credence to the Barnum profile than sceptics. By a process known as self-attribution, it has been shown in numerous studies that individuals with knowledge of astrology tend to describe their personality in terms of traits compatible with their sun sign. The effect is heightened when the individuals were aware the personality description was being used to discuss astrology. Individuals who were not familiar with astrology had no such tendency. In 1953, sociologist Theodor W. Adorno conducted a study of the astrology column of a Los Angeles newspaper as part of a project that examined mass culture in capitalist society. Adorno believed that popular astrology, as a device, invariably led to statements that encouraged conformity—and that astrologers who went against conformity with statements that discouraged performance at work etc. risked losing their jobs. Adorno concluded that astrology was a large-scale manifestation of systematic irrationalism, where flattery and vague generalisations subtly led individuals to believe the author of the column addressed them directly. Adorno drew a parallel with the phrase opium of the people, by Karl Marx, by commenting, "Occultism is the metaphysic of the dopes."
Confirmation biases can be used to explain why some beliefs persist when the initial evidence for them is removed. This belief perseverance effect has been shown by a series of experiments using what is called the "debriefing paradigm": participants read fake evidence for a hypothesis, their attitude change is measured, then the fakery is exposed in detail. Their attitudes are then measured once more to see if their belief returns to its previous level. A common finding is that at least some of the initial belief remains even after a full debrief. In one experiment, participants had to distinguish between real and fake suicide notes. The feedback was random: some were told they had done well while others were told they had performed badly. Even after being fully debriefed, participants were still influenced by the feedback. They still thought they were better or worse than average at that kind of task, depending on what they had initially been told. In another study, participants read job performance ratings of two firefighters, along with their responses to a risk aversion test. This fictional data was arranged to show either a negative or positive association: some participants were told that a risk-taking firefighter did better, while others were told they did less well than a risk-averse colleague. Even if these two case studies were true, they would have been scientifically poor evidence for a conclusion about firefighters in general. However, the participants found them subjectively persuasive. When the case studies were shown to be fictional, participants' belief in a link diminished, but around half of the original effect remained. Follow-up interviews established that the participants had understood the debriefing and taken it seriously. Participants seemed to trust the debriefing, but regarded the discredited information as irrelevant to their personal belief. 
Myside bias was once believed to be associated with greater intelligence; however, studies have shown that myside bias can be more influenced by ability to rationally think as opposed to amount of intelligence. Myside bias can cause an inability to effectively and logically evaluate the opposite side of an argument. Studies have stated that myside bias is an absence of "active open-mindedness," meaning the active search for why an initial idea may by wrong. Typically, myside bias is operationalized in empirical studies as the quantity of evidence used in support of their side in comparison to the opposite side. A study has found individual differences in myside bias. This study investigates individual differences that are acquired through learning in a cultural context and are mutable. The researcher found important individual difference in argumentation. Studies have suggested that individual differences such as deductive reasoning ability, ability to overcome belief bias, epistemological understanding, and thinking disposition are a significant predictors of the reasoning and generating arguments, counterarguments, and rebuttals. A study by Christopher Wolfe and Anne Britt also investigated how participants' views of "what makes a good argument?" can be a source of myside bias that influence the way a person creates their own arguments. The study investigated individual differences of argumentation schema and asked participants to write essays. The participants were randomly assigned to write essays either for or against their side of the argument they preferred and given balanced or unrestricted research instructions. The balanced research instructions instructed participants to create a balanced argument that included both pros and cons and the unrestricted research instruction did not give any particular instructions on how to create the argument. Overall, the results revealed that balance research instruction significantly increased the use of participants adding opposing information to their argument. These data also reveal that personal belief is not a source of myside bias. Furthermore, participants who believed that good arguments were based on facts were more likely to exhibit myside bias than participants who did not agree with this statement. This evidence is consistent with the claims proposed in Baron's article that people's opinions about good thinking can influence how arguments are generated. 
Cognitive bias research has suggested that people are susceptible to illusions of PK. These include both the illusion that they themselves have the power, and that events they witness are real demonstrations of PK. For example, Illusion of control is an illusory correlation between intention and external events, and believers in the paranormal have been shown to be more susceptible to this illusion than others. Psychologist Thomas Gilovich explains this as a biased interpretation of personal experience. For example, to someone in a dice game willing for a high score, high numbers can be interpreted as "success" and low numbers as "not enough concentration." Bias towards belief in PK may be an example of the human tendency to see patterns where none exist, called the Clustering illusion, which believers are also more susceptible to. A 1952 study tested for experimenter's bias with respect to psychokinesis. Richard Kaufman of Yale University gave subjects the task of trying to influence eight dice and allowed them to record their own scores. They were secretly filmed, so their records could be checked for errors. Believers in psychokinesis made errors that favored its existence, while disbelievers made opposite errors. A similar pattern of errors was found in J. B. Rhine's dice experiments, which at that time were considered the strongest evidence for PK. In 1995, Wiseman and Morris showed subjects an unedited videotape of a magician's performance in which a fork bent and eventually broke. Believers in the paranormal were significantly more likely to misinterpret the tape as a demonstration of PK, and were more likely to misremember crucial details of the presentation. This suggests that confirmation bias affects people's interpretation of PK demonstrations. Psychologist Robert Sternberg cites confirmation bias as an explanation of why belief in psychic phenomena persists, despite the lack of evidence:""Some of the worst examples of confirmation bias are in research on parapsychology (...) Arguably, there is a whole field here with no powerful confirming data at all. But people want to believe, and so they find ways to believe. ""Psychologist Daniel Wegner has argued that an introspection illusion contributes to belief in psychokinesis. He observes that in everyday experience, intention (such as wanting to turn on a light) is followed by action (such as flicking a light switch) in a reliable way, but the underlying neural mechanisms are outside awareness. Hence, though subjects may feel that they directly introspect their own free will, the experience of control is actually inferred from relations between the thought and the action. This theory of "apparent mental causation" acknowledges the influence of David Hume's view of the mind. This process for detecting when one is responsible for an action is not totally reliable, and when it goes wrong there can be an illusion of control. This could happen when an external event follows, and is congruent with, a thought in someone's mind, without an actual causal link. As evidence, Wegner cites a series of experiments on magical thinking in which subjects were induced to think they had influenced external events. In one experiment, subjects watched a basketball player taking a series of free throws. When they were instructed to visualize him making his shots, they felt that they had contributed to his success. A 2006 meta-analysis of 380 studies found a small positive effect that can be explained by publication bias. 