Don't pay for fortune-telling, tarot or horoscopes to make decisions
- High value
- Evidence B
- Saves money
- Free
- Takes minutes
- No willpower
In plain words
In a classic classroom experiment, students were given a “personality analysis” that was in fact the same identical one for everyone, yet most found it very accurate. That is why fortune-telling seems accurate. Astrologers picked the right answer about as often as blind guessing. The cost is not just a few dozen CNY: in a fortune-telling ring in Xi County, Henan, which collected “incense money” and “offering packages” (供养套餐) of up to 3888 CNY, the ringleader got eleven years.
- Cost
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Free. The hard part is giving up a shortcut for making up your mind, so that from now on you have to think it through yourself.
- What you get
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A classic classroom experiment: after a personality test, students were given a “personal analysis” that was in fact the same for everyone, yet they generally found it very accurate. The author's conclusion was that “acceptance by the person or the analyst does not prove the interpretation is correct.” 39 students rated the accuracy of the analysis on a scale of 0 to 5; 34 gave it a 4 or 5, and the mean worked out from the distribution in the table is about 4.26. This explains why fortune-telling always seems accurate; the phenomenon is called the Barnum effect. Astrology has also been tested double-blind, with the result published in Nature. Astrologers had to pick, from three personality test results, the one that matched the birth chart. They picked 40 correctly out of 116, where blind guessing alone would get 38.5, and the astrologers had predicted in advance that they would get 58.5. An official case: the procuratorate (检察院) in Xi County, Henan, reported an online fortune-telling fraud ring that drew people in with free palm reading and then collected “incense money” (香火钱) and “offering packages” (供养套餐) of up to 3888 CNY. There were more than 50 victims, over 2,000,000 (200万) CNY in stolen money was recovered, and the ringleader was sentenced to eleven years in prison and fined 100,000 (10万) CNY
- Notes
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Both of these are just single studies. The Forer paper does not state the mean score directly; the 4.26 was worked out from the distribution in its Table 1. The only claim here is that it does not predict accurately, and no belief is being judged. Spending a few dozen CNY on it as entertainment is not counted; using it to decide whether to quit a job, marry or invest is where you lose money.
- Evidence grade
- B : Supported by research but without a precise number, or based on small or single studies.
- Sources
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- Forer BR (1949). The fallacy of personal validation: A classroom demonstration of gullibility. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 44(1):118-123（表 1 评分分布：2 分 1 人、3 分 4 人、4 分 18 人、5 分 16 人，N=39）. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0059240
- Carlson S (1985). A double-blind test of astrology. Nature 318:419-425（表 2：首选 116 份，挑中 40 份，随机期望 38.5，占星师预计 58.5；「The data are consistent with chance, inconsistent with astrological hypothesis」）. https://doi.org/10.1038/318419a0，第二作者主页全文 https://muller.lbl.gov/papers/Astrology-Carlson.pdf
- 最高人民检察院 (2026). 河南息县：历经三年持续追踪打掉一批网络算命诈骗团伙. https://www.spp.gov.cn/zdgz/202607/t20260728_732935.shtml
Mentioned in
Translated from the Chinese original. Original book, section 6, tip 15. Content may be out of date and rules differ by place. When you actually deal with an agency, a doctor or a court, follow what local officials, doctors and lawyers tell you. Disclaimer