Bestimmt das Sternzeichen den Charakter? - Coaching im Saarland
Es heißt, dass das Sternzeichen deinen Charakter begründet. Wir gehen der Frage „bestimmt das Sternzeichen den Charakter?“ nach.
Hartmann, Reuter und Nyborg (2006)
Beide! Wie so oft im Leben ist es eine Frage des Glaubens. Du wirst Belege für den Zusammenhang finden, wenn du daran glaubst oder diese ablehnen, wenn du kein Fan von Esoterik bist. Aus wissenschaftlicher Sicht zeigten <anchor>Hartmann, Reuter und Nyborg (2006)</anchor>, dass der Zusammenhang zwischen Sternzeichen und Charakter in ihrer Studie nicht existiert. Aber ist das bereits die Antwort auf die Frage „bestimmt das Sternzeichen den Charakter?“? Wohl eher nein, wenn du den Glauben und damit deine Gedanken wieder berücksichtigst.
The relationship between date of birth and individual differences in personality and general intelligence: A large-scale study - ScienceDirect
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## Personality and Individual Differences

# The relationship between date of birth and individual differences in personality and general intelligence: A large-scale study

Author links open overlay panelPeterHartmanna, MartinReuterb, HelmuthNyborga

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## Abstract

We investigated the relationship between date of birth and individual differences in personality and intelligence in two large samples. The first sample consisted of 4000+ middle-aged male subjects from the Vietnam Experience Study; personality was measured by the MMPI items converted to EPQ (scales) and a large battery of cognitive tests were factored to derive general intelligence, g. The second sample consisted of 11,000+ young adults from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth from 1979. g was extracted from the ten subtests of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery.

In no cases did date of birth relate to individual differences in personality or general intelligence.

A further goal was to test Eysenck’s notion of possible relationships between date of birth and the popular Sun Signs in astrology. No support could be found for such associations.

We conclude that the present large-scale study provides no evidence for the existence of relevant relationships between date of birth and individual differences in personality and general intelligence.

## Introduction

Several studies have investigated the relationship between date of birth and individual differences in personality or general intelligence but, in general, these studies are based on small sample sizes. Only a couple of newer studies by Chotai, Forsgren, Nilsson, and Adolfsson (2001) and by Chotai, Lundberg, and Adolfsson (2003), operate with appropriate sample sizes (i.e. 2130 and 1145 subjects, respectively). The present study circumvents the inherent problems with small samples by combining two unusually large populations to a total of more than 15,000 subjects. To optimise the chances of finding even remote relationships between date of birth and individual differences in personality and intelligence we further applied two different strategies. The first one was based on the common chronological concept of time (e.g. month of birth and season of birth). The second strategy was based on the (pseudo-scientific) concept of astrology (e.g. Sun Signs, The Elements, and astrological gender), as discussed in the book “Astrology: Science or superstition?” by Eysenck and Nias (1982).

A thorough review of the scientific literature is beyond the scope of this article since the voluminous literature dates back to the forties, but it is worth noting that many relationships have been established between date of birth and normal intelligence, personality, and also with psychiatric diseases and differences in physical attributes (Chotai et al., 2001, Joinson and Nettle, 2005). This present study limits itself to examining associations between date of birth, personality, and general intelligence.

A series of articles suggest that subjects born during spring or summer are significantly more intelligent than subjects born during the rest of the year, though the differences are small (e.g. Bibby et al., 1996, Eysenck, 1995, Eysenck and Nias, 1982, Pintner and Forlano, 1943). We found no post-1996 studies suggesting that date of birth is related to intelligence, but based on the early reports we expected to find a small but significant difference in intelligence in favour of subjects born during the spring or summer time.

A complete review of this topic is also beyond the scope of the present report so, with one exception, we emphasise studies from the past decade.

Forlano and Ehrlich (1941) studied the relationship between date of birth and personality and found that subjects scoring high on Extraversion (E) and low on Neuroticism (N) were more prone to be born during the colder months of the year. Gupta (1992) used the Hindi version of the EPI on 104 subjects (27–38years of age) and the I6 reports that people born during the summer score higher on Neuroticism than subjects born during winter or autumn, and lower on Impulsiveness than subjects born during spring and autumn. Moreover, subjects born during summer and winter appeared more Venturesome than subjects born during spring or autumn.

Chichilenko and Barbarash (2001) studied 154 male 17–20year old young adults and found that those born during winter, in general, scored significantly higher on Neuroticism N than those born during autumn, who again scored significantly higher than those born during summer. The female subjects (N=373) born during winter or summer scored significantly higher on N than those born during spring. With respect to Extraversion E, males and females born during autumn scored significantly higher than those born during summer.

A series of more recent and large-scale studies (Chotai et al., 2001, Chotai et al., 2002, Chotai et al., 2003) used the TCI to measure personality, in order to discover differences in Novelty Seeking (NS) as a function of date of birth. These studies show that younger subjects (below the age of 25) born during winter (October–January/March) are in general significantly more likely to score high on NS, than subjects born during the rest of the year (Chotai et al., 2002, Chotai et al., 2003). However, for subjects above the age of 25, the picture is reversed. In general, subjects born during winter show lower NS scores than subjects born during the rest of the year or during spring only (February–April). ( A certain overlap between some winter and spring months could be noted only in this presentation of the literature and is due to the summarizing nature of the present review) (Chotai et al., 2001, Chotai et al., 2003). However, the inverted relationship was more pronounced in females. Furthermore, the three studies by Chotai and colleagues found that older males born during winter scored significantly lower on Persistence (PS) than others (Chotai et al., 2001); and that younger subjects born during spring scored significantly lower on Self Directedness (SD) than others (Chotai et al., 2002); and lastly that subjects born during winter scored significantly higher on Harm Avoidance (HA) than others (Chotai et al., 2003).

Joinson and Nettle (2005) tested 448 subjects with a measure related to NS, namely Zuckerman’s Sensation Seeking (SS) scale, and found that subjects aged 20–45 born during October–March scored significantly higher on SS than others, while subjects aged 46–69 and born during October–March scored lower than subjects born during the rest of the year.

All together the results suggest that there are individual differences in NS or SS or E as a function of month or season of birth, and that they vary as a function of age and gender. The present study operates with Eysenckian personality dimensions (EPQ), and can therefore approach the alleged relationship using alternative personality scales to test whether findings are valid across instruments. The EPQ factors have been found to be related to the TCI and ZKPQ from the Zuckerman and Kuhlman’s Personality Questionnaire (see Zuckerman & Cloninger, 1996). Based on the positive correlations between Novelty Seeking, Psychoticism (P), and Extraversion (E) we expected to find differences in E and P as a function of date of birth. Other TCI factors, which have also been found to be associated with date of birth, are also related to the EPQ. For instance, Persistence is negatively related to Psychoticism; Self Directedness is related negatively to Psychoticism and Neuroticism. Finally, Harm Avoidance is negatively related to Extraversion and positively to Neuroticism (Zuckerman & Cloninger, 1996). Based on the previous findings and presuming that the instruments applied relate to Eysenck’s factors, it seems reasonable to expect that the present study will confirm a relationship between date of birth and individual differences in personality.

Several reviews of the literature on astrology (Dean et al., 1997, Eysenck and Nias, 1982) show, in general, little support for any claim of an effect of astrology. As highlighted by Dean et al. (1997), the effect sizes of astrologer’s judgment amount to no more than 0.05, indicating very little practical relevance of astrology. When astrological effects are in fact observed, they usually can be explained better by non-astrological factors like the Barnum effect (i.e. the “… tendency for people to identify with personality descriptions of a general and vague nature…”) or by acquaintance with Sun Signs and so on (Eysenck & Nias, 1982, p. 43). More recently, Clarke, Gabriels, and Barnes (1996) conducted a study on the effect of astrology in a sample of 190 subjects, testing two hypotheses. First, subjects born with the sun, moon and/or ascendant in positive signs (or the masculine gender) will be more extraverted than subjects born with these planets in the negative signs (feminine gender). Second, subjects born with the three planets in water signs will be more emotional than subjects born in non-water signs (confer with Table 1 showing which Sun Signs correspond to which Elements and astrological gender). Several t-tests indicated that subjects born with the sun and the moon in positive signs (masculine gender) were in fact more extraverted than subjects born with the sun and moon in negative signs. However, the significant p-values (about 0.03) would loose their significance had the authors used the Bonferroni correction to compensate for multiple testing.

Based on these results we did not expect to find relevant relationships between astrology (Sun Signs, Elements and astrological gender) and individual differences in general intelligence and personality.

## Section snippets

## Subjects

We drew subjects from two sources. First, archival data from the Vietnam Experience Study (VES) were kindly provided by Centers for Disease Control, 1988, Centers for Disease Control, 1989. The purpose of the VES study (to assess possible long term effect of military service for male veterans), the subjects (N=4462) and the test instruments used have been described in details elsewhere (Centers for Disease Control, 1988, Centers for Disease Control, 1989, Nyborg and Jensen, 2000, Nyborg and

## Results

Due to the space limitation only figures for the relationship between the dependent variable (personality and general intelligence) and month of birth are reported, since the other results are categorizations of these, and can accordingly to some extent be derived from these. Furthermore, all significant relationships are also reported.

## Discussion

The large-scale analyses of the VES data show no relationships between date of birth and personality as defined by the four Eysenckian personality dimensions. Given the rather liberal level of significance used in relation to the numerous analyses performed, it is rather surprising not to find at least one spurious relationship. Based on the research literature we expected to find at least some differences in personality as a function of date of birth.

The reason for the discrepancy is unknown.

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View more references

## Cited by (14)

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In this study, we tested the relationship between personal agency beliefs, represented by free will, scientific and fatalistic determinism and unpredictability, and epistemically suspect beliefs (ESBs), including conspiracy, paranormal, and pseudoscience beliefs, across two different cultures (Türkiye and the UK). In two preregistered studies ( N Study 1 = 682, N Study 2 = 532), we proposed and found correlational evidence for the idea that although seemingly contradictory, both forms of determinism—scientific and fatalistic—might lead individuals to feel a reduced control over their actions, prompting them towards simpler explanations offered by ESBs, thereby compensating for a diminished sense of agency. The relationship between free will, unpredictability, and ESBs varied by culture, likely influenced by the cultural interpretation of those beliefs. Our results underscore the link between personal agency and ESBs, suggesting that ESBs may act as a safeguard against eroding personal agency.

2023, European Journal for Philosophy of Science

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2020, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

2020, The Psychology of Tolerance in Times of Uncertainty

2017, Implausible Beliefs: In the Bible, Astrology, and UFOs

Copyright © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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