An investigation about astrology and attraction (Lecture at ISAR - Chicago 6 july 1996)
Keywords: SYNASTRY, ASPECT, SYMPATHY, ATTRACTION, MOON, VENUS, MARS.
If it is true that we learn the most about ourselves through relationships, because others act as a mirror for our behaviour, then synastry is probably the easiest part of astrology to investigate. People like C.G. Jung and Jan Ruis (Gauquelin married couple collection) got promising results indeed, and my personal experience told me that aspects between charts seem to play an important role in relations.
Collecting marriage data is a tedious task, and not all couples marry just for love. So I decided to study the moment where it all begins, the very first interaction with an unknown person. It seems - I think most people can confirm that - we have some "sixt sense" to judge someone at first sight, we like him/her or we don’t, without being able to tell why. Since we have little information about a person then, the "astrological information" (if any exists) may thus be dominant.
For an experiment to be "scientific" we need to have a well designed protocol to collect the data, as well as a concrete hypothesis about the results.
A shopping street is an easy place to find "unknown" people, so I sticked with that.
Picking out just people that look sympathetic or attractive would be a method, but then you would need a control group. For example: if there would be a lot of "cancers" in the collected group, it wouldn’t be possible to determine whether (1) cancers like to shop anyway, (2) cancers like to stop for any inquirer, (3) cancers like to stop for this specific inquirer or (4) there simply exist more cancers.
To avoid the necessity of a control group, the inquirer addressed himself to as much different people as possible, asked them the same question, and based upon the short talk and physical appearance, noted down a "score" from -3 to +3 (--- to +++), meaning:
| --- | "bah, ugly disgusting creature" |
| -- | "very unpleasant/not handsome at all" |
| - | "rather unsympathetic person, not handsome" |
| 0 | "neutral" |
| + | "seems not a bad person, sympathetic" |
| ++ | "really good looking, very friendly" |
| +++ | "Whow, I’d really like to take this one out for dinner tonight!" |
(& eventual comments), the sex, and finally he asked their birth date, time and place. If the precise time was unknown, he asked if it was morning, evening,...
The question asked was always "What do you think about astrology?" but it could be any question that allows the inquirer to form an opinion quickly about the inquired. To avoid problems like injuries, nothing about the real question was ever told.
Based upon previous experience, I assumed the following hypothesis:
People having a major aspect between their natal Moon (geocentrical longitude) and the inquirer’s will be found more attractive to the inquirer. The same yields for Venus and Mars.
("Major" aspects are conjunctions (0°), sextiles (60°), squares (90°), trines (120°) and oppositions (180°). I used an orb of 6°.)
369 people were inquired by myself (no other volunteer was available) in the summer of 1992 in my home town Gent. 275 of them were female, 94 male. 257 of them knew their birth times within 2 hours. The others were not considered for the Moon-Moon aspects.
The birth data and scores were entered in the astrological software program "Radix", giving an average value (µ) of 0.745 and a standard deviation (s) of 0.96. The females were found to be more attractive (µ=0.793, s=1.01) than the males (µ=0.596, s=0.79), but that might be caused by other than astrological factors. The variation was good, though not optimal: a score of -3 never occured, -2 only once. Of course it’s difficult to detest someone who is at least friendly enough to stop and give you 2 minutes of his time.
The average of the group with known birth time was higher, but that’s normal, considered they were mostly younger, thus physically better conserved.
The results are presented in the next table (M=male, F=female, T=total):
|
moon-moon |
venus-venus |
mars-mars | ||||||||
|
n |
µ |
s |
n |
µ |
s |
n |
µ |
s | ||
|
Conjunction Opposition Square Trine Sextile |
13 7 15 17 24 |
1.308 1.286 1.200 1.118 0.542 |
0.86 0.95 1.27 0.86 0.88 |
9 13 28 28 15 |
0.778 0.923 1.071 0.821 0.467 |
0.83 1.04 0.94 1.02 0.74 |
14 15 22 26 20 |
1.429 0.600 0.773 1.192 0.600 |
0.85 0.91 0.92 1.13 0.82 | |
|
major aspect |
M F T |
17 59 76 |
0.588 1.119 1.000 |
0.87 1.00 0.99 |
33 60 93 |
0.606 0.983 0.849 |
0.90 0.95 0.94 |
27 70 97 |
0.741 0.986 0.918 |
0.81 1.04 0.99 |
|
no major aspect |
M F T |
36 145 181 |
0.583 0.738 0.707 |
0.84 0.99 0.96 |
61 215 276 |
0.590 0.740 0.707 |
0.74 1.03 0.97 |
67 205 272 |
0.537 0.727 0.680 |
0.79 1.00 0.95 |
We see that the attraction scores were higher for cases with a synastry aspect, as expected! The important question to answer now is: was this just an accidental deviation, or is it a "real" effect?
An appropriate statistical test that allows you to check if two samples belong to the same population, is the so called t-test. Applying this test to the group with a Moon-Moon aspect in relation with the group without this aspect, it says that there is less than 4% chance that they don’t really differ. This is generally accepted as a significant result, though in the case of astrology, sceptics tend to require more convincing results. The significance for Venus-Venus aspects is only 25%, while for Mars-Mars aspects it’s 4% again.
Of course, we see that if we would have left out the sextiles, we would have had a much better result (0.1, 2 and 1% significance)! But we have to play fair and stick to the hypothesis.
However, some other tools to examine the truth of the hypothesis exist. First we can check how a change in the orb affects the result, and secondly we can see what happens when the inquirer has more than one of the aspects with someone.
The mean attraction value versus the used orb is displayed in the following graph. To make a global average, an offset value, equal to the average score of those who didn’t have the considered aspect within a 12° orb, was substracted. The error flags represent the error on the average plus the intrinsic error on every measurement (0.5 "point").
We see that a "Lorentz function" fits nicely trough all of the points, while it would be very hard to fit a horizontal line trough them. In other words: the narrower the orb, the more pronounced the effect. This constatation definitely supports the hypothesis.
In the next table, mean scores for people with combinations of synastry aspects are shown. For combinations with Moon-Moon aspects only the group with known birth time was taken into account.
|
Venus-Venus and Mars-Mars |
Moon-Moon and Venus-Venus |
Moon-Moon and Mars-Mars | |
|
both aspects |
µ = 1.045 n = 22 s = 1.00 |
µ = 0.941 n = 17 s = 0.97 |
µ = 1.050 n = 20 s = 1.05 |
|
just one of the aspects |
µ = 0.836 n = 146 s = 0.95 |
µ = 0.933 n = 105 s = 0.99 |
µ = 0.963 n = 127 s = 0.97 |
|
none of both |
µ = 0.642 n = 201 s = 0.96 |
µ = 0.667 n = 135 s = 0.95 |
µ = 0.615 n = 130 s = 0.94 |
|
not a single aspect |
µ = 0.585 n = 94 s = 0.94 | ||
What we get here is, again, consequent with the hypothesis: more than one synastry aspect increases the attraction, whatever combination we make (µ around 1), while a total lack of aspects yields the lowest attraction (µ=0.585). In fact, if we compare the latter value with the averages from the first table (one or more aspects), the significance levels become 1, 5 and 2%!
The hypothesis that there is a relation between synastry aspects and attraction or sympathy, seems to be confirmed. The data show a consistent pattern that allows us to estimate the level of significance in the order of 5% or better.
In case of a replication, the hypothesis could be fine tuned by excluding the sextile aspects, since they didn’t contribute to the positive result at all.
Improvements for the data gathering can be made:
-As the results were more pronounced with people from the opposite sex, it would be wise not to collect data from the same sex anymore (better said: use the preferred sex only).
-Giving two different scores, one for sympathy/antipathy and one for physical attraction, might increase the value of this research.
-Suppose the inquirer has a conjunction Venus-Mars. In that case it is impossible to determine whether (e.g.) it is a Moon-Venus synastry aspect that causes attraction or a Moon-Mars aspect. Therefore, having several inquirers to judge smaller groups would be more interesting than one inquirer to judge a large group. The ideal situation would be: a group of unknown people judging eachother. The sample size would also increase dramatically: for example, a group of 30 people would give 30 x 29 = 870 judgements!
-Sceptics told me the results could be biased because it was the same person that interviewed and asked the birth data.
Probably that would be true if the position of the sun was involved in the hypothesis, but it is a huge task to memorize the ephemeride tables of the other celestial bodies! Anyhow, it would be better that the inquiries be done by someone with no astrological or astronomical knowledge.
It would not be good to use another person to ask the birth data - I think - because some "intimate" atmosphere has to be created to feel nothing but the inquired person’s "energy", and if a second person stands there watching you, they might get suspicious, and even think that you are recruting for some sect!
Volunteers who want to do a replication are very welcome to contact me!
Koen Van de moortel, june 1996