{"id":4224,"date":"2018-05-11T01:18:25","date_gmt":"2018-05-11T01:18:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ohmystars\/?p=4224"},"modified":"2018-05-11T01:18:25","modified_gmt":"2018-05-11T01:18:25","slug":"dont-personality-birth-chart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ohmystars\/2018\/05\/dont-personality-birth-chart.html","title":{"rendered":"You Don&#8217;t Have A Personality (But Your Birth Chart Does)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ohmystars\/files\/2017\/01\/matthew-currie-astrology-colo-gorilla.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-3361\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/360\/2017\/01\/matthew-currie-astrology-colo-gorilla-195x300.jpg\" alt=\"matthew currie astrology colo gorilla\" width=\"195\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a>A team of researchers have recently determined that chimps and orangutans have personalities:<\/strong> individual variable traits like extroversion and neurosis and such. Of course this should come as no surprise, not only given that apes are close relatives of ours&#8230; but if you&#8217;ve ever know many cats or dogs or parrots, you already know that animals in general tend to have &#8220;personalities.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>So why was this recent study so noteworthy?<\/strong> A &#8220;personality&#8221; is a ridiculously hard thing to measure, weigh, or dissect in a scientific, objective way. You can&#8217;t bomb a person with accelerated particles or spray them with Luminol to detect their personality either (but you might get a clue from doing so how well they deal with being sprayed or irradiated by jerks in lab coats). And now that we&#8217;ve established that Bongo is more agreeable than Bobo&#8230;what exactly does one DO with this information?<\/p>\n<p>The modern science of psychology is over a century old. Millions have studied it, billions have been spent on research, and we all seem to think we have personalities&#8230; yet there is no consensus. Show me a psychiatrist with a firm professional opinion as to why you have a personality, and I&#8217;ll show you two who disagree. <strong>That doesn&#8217;t necessarily dismiss psychiatry as a whole, but remember this next time you hear a skeptic argue against astrology based on the &#8220;personality.&#8221;<\/strong> Your skeptic friend probably has a personality too&#8230; but until you&#8217;ve been shown the graphs, feel free to believe otherwise.<\/p>\n<p>This is why, when it comes to defending astrology (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ohmystars\/2013\/12\/dear-skeptic-an-open-letter-to-the-james-randi-educational-foundation.html\" target=\"_blank\">and holy cow, have I done that a few times<\/a>), I prefer to stick to something more observable than just personality-based observations. I prefer predictive work, like &#8220;holy cow is your career going to be messed up in the next month or two (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ohmystars\/2018\/05\/astrology-kanye-west-said.html\" target=\"_blank\">looking at you, Kanye<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>Put another way: I can&#8217;t tell you WHY, exactly, that &#8220;Sun square Mars and Jupiter&#8221; made your ex a huge jerk&#8230; but at least I can see that potential there. Of course, you already knew that&#8230; so shouldn&#8217;t you have seen me about this a lot earlier?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ohmystars\/about-matthew-currie.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>CLICK HERE to find out how you can get a personalized, informative, life-changing consultation that will help you take charge of your life in the next year!<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/matthewtheastrologer\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>CLICK HERE to join the OH MY STARS Facebook Fan Page, and get exclusive content, an additional discount on a reading, and more material on blog entries!<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A team of researchers have recently determined that chimps and orangutans have personalities: individual variable traits like extroversion and neurosis and such. Of course this should come as no surprise, not only given that apes are close relatives of ours&#8230; but if you&#8217;ve ever know many cats or dogs or parrots, you already know that&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":560,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128,89],"tags":[2,147],"class_list":["post-4224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astrology","category-not-astrology","tag-astrology","tag-not-astrology"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>You Don&#039;t Have A Personality (But Your Birth Chart Does) - Oh My Stars<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ohmystars\/2018\/05\/dont-personality-birth-chart.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"You Don&#039;t Have A Personality (But Your Birth Chart Does) - Oh My Stars\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A team of researchers have recently determined that chimps and orangutans have personalities: individual variable traits like extroversion and neurosis and such. Of course this should come as no surprise, not only given that apes are close relatives of ours&#8230; but if you&#8217;ve ever know many cats or dogs or parrots, you already know that&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ohmystars\/2018\/05\/dont-personality-birth-chart.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Oh My Stars\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-05-11T01:18:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ohmystars\/files\/2017\/01\/matthew-currie-astrology-colo-gorilla-195x300.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Matthew Currie\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"You Don't Have A Personality (But Your Birth Chart Does) - Oh My Stars","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ohmystars\/2018\/05\/dont-personality-birth-chart.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"You Don't Have A Personality (But Your Birth Chart Does) - Oh My Stars","og_description":"A team of researchers have recently determined that chimps and orangutans have personalities: individual variable traits like extroversion and neurosis and such. 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