SIO341: Does Belief in Astrology Correlate with Narcissism?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:12 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this is episode 341, and Mars is in Tardigrade right now, so that means we all are cute little things, microscopic things. How's it going, Lindsay but How, but, like, how's your aura, medium rare I don't know, what I'm not sure what, like, adjectives it was, an aura, red, uh I don't t know. No.

0:00:27 Lindsey: So good, yeah, I Yeah, no I did, I Yeah I Don't know either. I did look up up both of our horoscopes today, though So if you're interested

0:00:40 Thomas: Ooh, I am looking forward to that. I assume it'll be integrated into our amazing deep dive for the day. It's a science thingy. Uh, this is a fun one. I've, I sent you so many things. It's my favorite thing to do. Here's what I do, is like a jukebox of science, kind, an old reference, but I guess they still have them in, you know, novelty bars or something. And I just send her every science thing that I come across. And then what happens is, like, I I do the fawns, like, hit the jukebox and a science thingy comes out of Lindsey. And I don't even know what one it'll be in a given day. It's great, it's like, it's such a good system. This one, I vaguely remember, as astrology and what astrology says about the people who believe it, I think

0:00:41 Lindsey: Yeah Yeah Mm That's right, yeah. Paper that we're going to be talking about is looking at personality traits, primarily, that predict, uh, belief in astrology. It's very interesting, um I think this was one of the ones that you found on Reddit. You find so many good things on Reddit, it's

0:01:27 Thomas: Okay Hey Reddit is great, it's an underrated place. I'll tell you this small rant on Reddit, though, small, this is like a cause I seriously believe in, like, more than anything thing. 'Cause I browse Reddit and they now have, I think it's kind of new, I don't know if they always had it, they now have on posts and NSFW tag, not right? Safe for work tag for any boomers and silent generation listening. Might think that might mean the boobs or something, could you be some sex or nudity or whatever. Fair enough. Not safe for work. Get it. But what that also means is like a guy taking a sledgehammer to the head or something. And And so I want to really be able to not see a dude take a sledgehammer to the head, like, that would be great.

And need a more meaningful fucking label than not safe for work, not safe for work, because someone might say, like, hell in the video, or it's an ISIS execution, like, those, that's not the same, those are okay. Maybe they're both not safe from work, but there's a big difference between those two things one of them. I don't want to see like like ever. And the thing about Reddit is you're browsing along and it just plays whatever video, you know what I mean? Like it I'm thinking sometimes it'll be not safe for work. I'll be like, Oh, okay. I don't know what happens in this one. Maybe like, I don't know, someone streaks by or something. Who knows what the fuck it'll Be. There's a million posts every day. And some some, random thing will be happening. Like a guy will fight a bear naked or something and that's, that's not

0:01:46 Lindsey: -huh Right, right Right Oh Oh Oh Yeah Right Yeah Oh

0:02:47 Thomas: Safe or work. Oh, that one's fine. I wouldn't mind that assuming there's no gore, like, he's just, he's like boxing or something. No difference between that and, like, all of a sudden a video plays across your screen and it's, like, fucking horrible, and they're both not safe for work, Lindsey, that's the same one label.

Can we get one that's, like, NSFW but total US prude edition, you know, just, like, because there might be a fraction of a nipple in it, can we get a label that designates that and a label that's, like, absolute horror death thing that I don't want to see you to Mr. Reddit, ever, somebody call Reddit, okay, small Reddit rant aside, side, it is a wonderful place other than that, uh, especially find some science thingies, you get science thing he's posted, people are excited about him, uh, often Lindsey might tell us that it's a totally inappropriate science thingy that doesn't support its conclusion, or it might be totally valid, we don't know which when it comes to astrology yet. I can't wait to, uh, hear the breakdown, I mean, spoilers, I thought you're gonna, like, milk it a little bit, or let it, okay

0:02:49 Lindsey: Okay, yeah Uh I totally agree, mm -hmm, yeah This one's kind of like a gray area, I'd say, um like to give a little preview sometime, but yeah, I mean, I, we've really had too many excellent science thingies lately. And I think people are going to get spoiled. So I'm glad that we're doing something that I've got a few criticisms of. It's not garbage or anything. But paper is by Ida Anderson and colleagues. It was published very very recently, 2022. And title is, Even the Stars Think That I Am Superior, Personality, Intelligence, and Belief in Astrology. So yeah, you can guess where this is going.

0:03:45 Thomas: Ah Yes Yes. Tip their hand a little bit on that.

0:04:10 Lindsey: Of the report is how intelligence, as well as certain personality traits, including narcissism, predict who is most likely to believe in astrology. And just because people are probably anticipating what the results are going to show, given the title. Think this topic could seem a little easy, or like it's punching down. Like, why would this be relevant or interesting for us to talk about or for these researchers to look at? But there So first, the authors make a point at the end of their paper that I think is helpful to broach now, which is that belief systems like astrology implicitly put you, whoever you are, at the center of the universe, kind of literally.

0:04:46 Thomas: Sure.

0:04:46 Lindsey: So while it It might seem like a silly, harmless thing if somebody, you their horoscope seriously or believes in astrology. The whole conceit of this belief system is that, yeah, the universe is like conspiring in a way that is guiding the events in your life.

0:05:00 Thomas: Right. Astrologers advocate here. One say, well, no, it's not just me. Like it's everybody. You know, it'S like it'S all of us are affected. Everybody has a birthday, you we're all affected by the planets or whatever mystical BS. So in that way, it''s not necessarily like narcissistic to just be focused on like how it'' 's going to affect you in particular. Mm hmm.

0:05:18 Lindsey: That the habit of sort of thinking about these events in terms of specifically how they are affecting you is Kind of like practicing a habit, cognitive, of self-focus.

0:05:28 Thomas: Fair.

0:05:29 Lindsey: Think that there are probably ways of conceiving of astrology that are not self -focused. And we can touch on that a little bit at the end. But the way that it sort of is manifested, especially in Western context, I think definitely is. So I think that's a, that's I think it's an interesting critique. It's, it's not one that I've, I've I've heard before that, usually we're focused on the fact that it's not supported, but the idea that like, it'S also maybe promoting self -focus in ways that are not desirable, I think is, is really interesting. So we'll come back to that, um, after we go through the results a

0:05:48 Thomas: Yeah.

0:05:57 Thomas: Yeah, question. You mentioned intelligence, and I was thinking, you know, I could see that correlation going either way, because I also feel like astrology, as much as you, our skeptical audience and me included, would have a bias that like, yeah, only idiots would be into this stuff. Stuff, I also could see like being into astrology, to me feels like a very privileged thing and I do know that like intelligence often correlates with like people who, you know, have the disposable income in order to like have a bunch of tutors and have the, you know, like I could see a correlation between privilege and measures of intelligence, maybe for that reason. Maybe it goes the other way. I'm just, uh, I'm wondering, okay.

0:06:15 Lindsey: Hmm.

0:06:31 Lindsey: Okay. All we won't spoil the results then.

0:06:33 Thomas: Good, yeah.

0:06:34 Lindsey: The second thing, I think this is a thing worth talking about, is that, and I find this very surprising, apparently a lot of people believe in astrology is That surprising to you? Yeah.

0:06:40 Thomas: Um Is surprising in one way, but I already knew that. I don't want to like, I'm, I just know that like historically, one, think it was Christopher Hitchens used to rail, maybe somebody, some skeptic used to go on about the fact that like there's still an astrology, like in the New York Times, you know, every day or whatever. So it's like something that stupid is, is majorly covered in, in news outlets every single day. So I'm shocked, but not surprised. How about that? Or surprised, but non -shocked. I actually don't know which one that

0:06:57 Lindsey: Yeah. All Let Me give you the numbers to see this, if this is surprising, because it just, I don't know, I, I think that astrology is one of those things that's pretty, pretty safe, safe to ridicule casually to Somebody that you don't, no, but Yeah, but apparently that is not, not true. So yeah, according to the authors, belief in astrology has been increasing in recent years.

0:07:16 Thomas: Our audience. Oh my God. Yeah. Goes my, my privilege hypothesis.

0:07:28 Lindsey: Yeah, it could be. Guess would have been that like in any given moment, the number of people who believe in astrology is like one less than it was the moment before, but that's apparently not true, and that's weird. So to support that claim, this they 2018 Pew report, which describes data collected in 2017, suggesting that nearly two -thirds of American adults endorse at least one of four new age beliefs that they asked about. And one of them is astrology.

0:07:53 Thomas: Okay.

0:07:53 Lindsey: So % of Americans believe spiritual energy can be located in physical things. I'm not exactly sure what that but like crystals.

0:07:59 Thomas: I feel like that's, that's pretty bright. Yeah, I was going to say crystals, other, you I don't know.

0:08:04 Lindsey: Yeah. Chucky. I don't know. Something

0:08:06 Thomas: Yeah. A lot of people believe in that crap.

0:08:10 Lindsey: Yeah. So, 41% of Americans believe in psychics, according to to this poll. 33 believe in reincarnation, that seemed high to me. Uh, 29 believe in astrology, according to this 2017 people, well, let's come back to it though, so that's 29, 20 that are like affirmatively saying like, yes, I absolutely believe it. Um, no data on what percentage believe in ghosts, by the way, I was kind of disappointed at that, but um, So, oh,

0:08:21 Thomas: Oh, that's lower than I would have thought. Okay.

0:08:32 Thomas: Every 100 fucking percent. I just got back from Scotland from the wedding. That was beautiful. I love the people to death. They're the best. Um, had to get right before the wedding a little little little bit talk on how the ghost of somebody, the grandparent, was in the house or something. I'm just like, okay, all right, I just don't say anything, but it's just I hate that that happens, like, really a spirit is in this house. How does that work? Has, how does it stay tethered to the house? I don't know, I guess it's like, you say it's a certain objects gets tethered to, including the earth itself. I don't know but they float just above the ground, that's what's amazing, isn't that cool? They have, they have really good control over their altitude, that they don't just fly off because the planet's rotating and spinning and all that, but they do hover, you cool, I want to get my hands on that technology, I us, you know, hmm

0:08:46 Lindsey: Dear. -hmm. Yeah. What it is. It's Yeah. It is interesting.

0:09:14 Lindsey: -huh. It is cool. It's like hoverboards. Other interesting thing about this Pew poll is that they broke out beliefs a little bit by religion, and Christians and, quote -unquote, nuns do not actually differ that much from each other in terms of the percentage that hold these beliefs. So % of Christians versus 62 % of religiously unaffiliated individuals hold at least one of those four new age beliefs.

0:09:26 Thomas: Oh, interesting by Covered on the show before, um, being a nun and you know, N -O -N -E doesn't necessarily mean you're an atheist skeptic.

0:09:44 Lindsey: That's very true. Yeah.

0:09:46 Thomas: Like not at all. In fact.

0:09:46 Lindsey: So it doesn't, category right? Is going to capture spiritual but not people, for example. And, you know, I'd say that those folks are sort of disproportionately likely to do sort of the new agey type thing. But

0:09:56 Thomas: Yeah, but what's interesting is wouldn't you think that astrology would contradict Christianity?

0:10:01 Lindsey: Right. It would kind of make sense if Christians showed like lower belief in it. But yeah,

0:10:04 Thomas: Yeah. Do you think Jesus And the Holy Spirit are also like, yeah, let's tilt Mars a little bit and that'll, that'll would be a good way of you telling fucking Stacy that she's gonna get a cold coffee at Starbucks, you know, or something. I, yeah, there's like, there seems weird that Jesus and all them, whatever, spirits would be into that, but I think it also goes to show that people don't really take beliefs in the intellectual issues, based argument based way that we think they do you know, hmm.

0:10:20 Lindsey: Don't no, know. I yeah, Yeah, and actually, there's a couple of things we're going to talk about that maybe speak to that a little bit in terms of reasons that people endorse it. Yeah, so these numbers are pretty interesting to me. This Pew poll that they cited doesn't actually speak to whether rates of belief in astrology are increasing, which is the claim that they they were making.

0:10:44 Thomas: Oh.

0:10:44 Lindsey: So just shows that, you as of a few years ago, the numbers are surprisingly high. But I went and found this 2014 paper indicating that Americans actually have become less skeptical about astrology over the last of decades, which is kind of interesting, as indicated by their response to a question about whether astrology is scientific. So they found that in 1980s, around 50 % of Americans said that astrology is, quote, not at all scientific.

0:11:10 Thomas: Wow, that's really good number, what happened to us, and

0:11:11 Lindsey: Yeah. And, check this out. Yeah, so around 50 % in the early 1980s, that percentage increased, suggesting that Americans were becoming more skeptical about astrology until the early aughts, when it peaked around 66 % of people saying that astrology was not at All Scientific. And then since then, Then, right, actually, that was the first thing that I thought about.

0:11:30 Thomas: Then 9 -11 happened and no, I don't know. I'm Really, I was just kidding, yeah.

0:11:35 Lindsey: Yeah, I don't know what it is. I'm not sure what happened, but it was like, yeah, aughts peaked at 66%. And then since then, the percentage has been declining fairly steadily until most recent data they had in this particular paper was 2012. And as of that point, only 55 % of Americans said that astrology was not at all scientific, which was comparable to the 1980s number. I another article summarized data collected in 2022. So this is very recent. And there's some very disturbing stuff in here indicating that, yes, indeed, astrology belief is still more prevalent. It's still increasing. Increasing. And it's definitely higher than it was in the early aughts. And it's comparable to where it was into the early 1980s. So it's only about 50 % of Americans, according to this 2022 data, who say that they absolutely don't believe in astrology. Everybody else either says, yes, I definitely believe in it. Or you're like, I don't know, maybe it's a thing.

0:11:38 Thomas: Yeah.

0:12:26 Thomas: Also weird is, even if I believed in astrology, I wouldn't answer that it's scientific. I'd be like, no, it's spirits and stuff, there's no sign, I mean, I guess people, because there's like geometry or something, they think that's science. Mm.

0:12:36 Lindsey: So I'm glad you said that because because it's of whether people consider it scientific, I think, is distinguishable from whether they believe it. And they actually both measure in the study that we're going to talk about. It's like one indicator, I guess, of skepticism is whether or not people consider it scientific. So scientifically supported, right? So that's crazy to me. There's also some data in this same recent paper that I was reading, indicating that a surprisingly high high number of people say that if knew that a political candidate was super into astrology, that it wouldn't change the way that they voted, which I think is crazy. And affiliation didn't change that percentage. So 40 % of both Democrats and Republicans that said that that information would make no difference to the way they voted.

0:12:48 Thomas: -hmm. Mm. God. Yeah. No. Wow. Make

0:13:21 Lindsey: That's nuts to me, right?

0:13:22 Thomas: America, not astrologers, again, make

0:13:25 Lindsey: Know. It's weird, so point being, yeah, out of every two people that you meet on a random street, either affirmatively thinks that astrology is a thing or hasn't ruled it out. And that is weird to me, I'm living in a slightly different universe than I thought when

0:13:25 Thomas: Um. Yeah. You probably haven't done much community theater then, because

0:13:43 Lindsey: I was a kid, I did, yeah.

0:13:44 Thomas: Yeah, well, I, that's, and also in California, maybe it's different, but, you, of my energy in the, you know, 2010s, came from, in terms of, like, debunking stuff. I'm just like, oh, my God, the fucking nutritional advice they give, the ghost crap, the astrology. It's for a skeptical -minded person to through, I'll be honest.

0:13:57 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah. True, thanks, yeah, yeah, if you don't want to offend strangers, don't go, don't, the, the astrology, like, don't make fun of astrology. Bad. It's, make fun of people who think the moon landing might've been faked. That's still pretty safe. I think it's only like 11 % of people that are saying that.

0:14:12 Thomas: Yeah. Or if you don't really care that much about being friends with everyone, just, yeah, go ahead and make fun of the things you think are invalid. By the way, what percentage of the people are Trump supporters? Cool with alienating those folks.

0:14:16 Lindsey: True, true, true. Absolutely. Enough. So it's kind of an interesting question as to why acceptance of astrology would be on the rise to me. And that's not an an answered question, but there findings suggest that when things like stress and threat and, you know, environmental instability, right? Yes. When those things increase, beliefs some supernatural and pseudoscientific beliefs also increase. So for example, Keenan published a paper in 1994 that intense psychological stress, and in this case, they were defining stress, like their operationalization of stress, was being in an area in Israel during the Gulf War that either was or was not exposed to missile attacks. So this is like for real stress,

0:14:29 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. 9-11.

0:14:59 Thomas: Wow. Yeah,

0:15:04 Lindsey: Right? Not like some cute lab manipulation. Yeah. What the results indicated was that being in the higher stress areas was associated with increases in magical thinking.

0:15:04 Thomas: That's some stress. Mm-hmm.

0:15:11 Lindsey: So is can elicit this kind of thinking, and it especially does so in people who have certain personality traits like a low tolerance for ambiguity, um, Yeah.

0:15:19 Thomas: Oh, really? That's interesting. Because that would make you think it would correlate more with right-wing people, because I think we've talked about that as a quality that correlates with being conservative. Yeah, interesting.

0:15:22 Lindsey: It is. Right. That's true. Yeah, Oh, that's uh, that's an interesting one. Yeah, um,

0:15:32 Thomas: But I think other things probably compensate for that effect.

0:15:35 Lindsey: So there, there might be some, some contradictory effects, like if religiosity is higher, I think some people associate it with a... yeah, so I don't know, um, Lilquist, Lilquist and Lindemann in 1998 presented evidence that personal crisis is associated with an increased likelihood of using astrology to gain a sense of personal control in one's life. On the basis of findings like these, the authors speculate that there are a number of modern crises that could be increasing feelings of uncertainty and

0:15:39 Thomas: Mm-hmm. Yeah, God, in line. Modern crises like there's just there's no shortness of modern crises that could be contributing to this. So, yeah, totally.

0:16:03 Lindsey: Yeah, Climate change, tons of social upheaval, pandemic, obviously, yeah, there's lots of things

0:16:09 Thomas: Oh, housing crisis in 2008. Wage stagnation. It's plenty of things.

0:16:12 Lindsey: Yeah, Yeah, Absolutely. Um, worth noting here, by the way, that belief in conspiracy theories is predicted by similar kinds of factors. So conspiracy theories, like astrology, not evidence-based, but they do provide a framework work that simplifies the world and gives people a greater feeling that they understand how things work and offers a sense of personal control. Like, if I feel like I know the hallmarks of the satanic pedophiles, I can avoid them. And that's very rad for me, you protecting my children.

0:16:41 Thomas: I don't think they're interested in you anymore. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Okay. Your children that you don't have also.

0:16:46 Lindsey: Yeah, exactly. Right. So that connection makes sense. And in fact, the authors cite evidence here that belief in astrology is actually correlated with belief in other unsupported ideas, including conspiracy theories, which So this current study is exploring individual differences that predict who is most likely to believe in astrology, specifically how a set of personality traits and intelligence relate to those beliefs. And they're building on some existing work here. So past studies suggest that personality traits that are correlated with belief non -evidence -based beliefs, right? Right. So largely, this research is focused on the big five model of personality, which we've talked about a little bit before. This is the predominant model of personality in psychology and conceptualizes personality as a combination of five traits. So big four personality traits are extroversion. I think people know what that is, right?

0:16:58 Thomas: Sure. Yeah,

0:17:30 Lindsey: Extroverted people are more sociable and assertive. Agreeableness, highly agreeable people prioritize social harmony and avoid conflict. Conflict. Neuroticism, highly neurotic people are very like stress reactive, very emotionally reactive, and they're prone worry. To Openness to experience, this captures attraction to like novel and aesthetic experiences, as well as a kind of intellectualism. So this is kind of two sub traits here. Like enjoying wrestling with novel ideas and difficult problems would be that intellectualism component.

0:17:58 Lindsey: Factor is conscientiousness. So people who are high on conscientiousness tend to be organized and punctual and keep up with their responsibilities, right? So that's the Big Five.

0:18:05 Thomas: That's the one that always tricks me because I'm like, oh, I'm highly conscientious. And then every single thing you describe is I'm the lowest possible. So I'm not conscientious in that way. I'm extremely conscientious of like interacting with others in different ways than those things.

0:18:05 Lindsey: Yeah. Hmm. Interesting.

0:18:21 Thomas: I don't know. I don't know. I just think that's what conscientiousness means. And I don'T understand why that's not the case. I still don't get it. We'll solve it later on another day. It's okay.

0:18:21 Lindsey: So, like, social intelligence or something? Is that what you're Talking about? Hmm. Interesting. Okay. Oh.

0:18:32 Thomas: Like I always put my shopping cart away. Isn't that being conscientious?

0:18:34 Lindsey: Yeah. Okay. I Mean, that is a conscientious trade. Yeah.

0:18:38 Thomas: Then you're like, yeah, being, being and organized. Like what the fuck does that have to do with conscientious, I don't know. I guess the punctual part I get. That's, that's fair. The, but the organized part, what does that have to be with being conscientous? Am I, are you organizing for someone else? What am I being conscientitious of?

0:18:45 Lindsey: I Don't know, it's it's one of the one of the facets that goes into this, this thing. Those those things tend to being correlated, um. Yeah.

0:18:59 Thomas: Yeah, that makes Sense, maybe.

0:19:00 Lindsey: Yeah. So several several studies have found connections between the Big Five personality traits and beliefs in pseudoscience and the paranormal. So, for instance, people who are higher on openness to experience are more likely to believe certain paranormal things, and They're also more likely to experience something called apophenia, which is A tendency to perceive meaningful patterns and connections in Randomly occurring things. Yeah.

0:19:13 Thomas: Huh. Oh. Interesting. But That's a real catch-22 with that trait that, like, I would love, I love openness, I feel like it's great when people are open to new experiences, new ideas, but then it, it sucks that the bad side of that is you're also open to the dumbest fucking shit ever. That's, that sucks. Yeah.

0:19:40 Lindsey: And it's So they don't get into this much in this paper, but the connection between apophenia and openness to experience is a little complicated. Those two sub dimensions that I talked about, about like being open to aesthetic experiences and the intellectualism tend to relate to apophthenia in like opposite ways and to these other beliefs, like beliefs and conspiracy theories and things. Oh, meaningful connections in randomly occurring things.

0:19:58 Thomas: Maybe I'm confused in my mind. What's the apophenia again? OK, OK ,OK.

0:20:04 Lindsey: So like in its most extreme pathological form, it's what underlies like delusions paranoid and psychotic episodes, like seeing coded messages in newspapers or whatever.

0:20:05 Thomas: Gotcha. Yeah.

0:20:12 Lindsey: But there are normative examples of this, like Seeing Faces in Clouds. Yeah. All

0:20:16 Thomas: Yeah. Because there are faces up there. No, I'm just kidding. Make fun of all these beliefs and be like, but there are phases in the cloud. That's where the phases live is in the clouds. Duh.

0:20:18 Lindsey: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah! But obviously, that... Yeah, Exactly. Who are higher on openness are more likely to hold various kinds of unsupported beliefs, and apophenia may be part of the mechanism that explains why. It's pretty easy to draw a line between perceiving connections and patterns in randomly occurring things and perceiving evidence for the validity of, say, a conspiracy theory or the validity of a horoscope or Something, right? So that's one connection between personality and holding unsupported beliefs. There may also be a relationship between extroversion and belief in astrology, so at least one study observed that people who believe in paranormal phenomena are more likely to be extroverted, whereas skeptics tend to be more introverted, um, idea

0:20:47 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, that has been my experience. Why the hell is that? Other than, well, OK, my theory would be, I'm not sure if this is true, but like my this is so much of my life, again, with doing theater and being like liberal Californians and trying to like get along in life, which order to just fucking get along. Along, you got to pretend that the ghost of your grandmother is haunting the fucking wedding, you to just get along. But if you're like me and you're, like, well, I don't really, except in this one situation where these people were delightful and I didn't want to, so you I'm not going to contradict anyone on their day, wedding or whatever. Other situation, I probably would have pushed back and been, like—oh, that's—well, not in any other—there would be many situations where I may push back on beliefs like that in certain ways, and it's because I don—you know, like I'm more apt to be, like,"Well, if that person doesn't want want to be friends, that's fucking fine. I don't care. Whereas extroverts are like, no, I must get along with everyone.

0:21:48 Lindsey: Well, So what you're describing actually sounds more like agreeableness to me, um, also it's like it's not describing like a change in privately held beliefs, you're talking about like whether you're likely to to along with what somebody's saying, um, you I try, uh, but yeah, I I actually am not sure why these two things would be correlated.

0:21:53 Thomas: That's fair. That a really good point. Yeah. No, that is a fantastic point. But I will say one more thing on that point, which is that I think that, and you would agree with this, that a lot of our reasoning, a lot or our ways we arrive at beliefs is not so logical, so like if I'm someone who has a feeling of, I would like to get along with people, not that I'm gonna just say I believe in a thing because I don't, I also will likely go along with believing it, you at us just

0:22:11 Lindsey: Um, Okay, no, that's actually, that's a very good point, yeah. Very well could be the case that That, like, higher social yeah that higher social needs, it means that, yeah, let you adopt more, uh, popular beliefs, that that could very well be the key. Okay, that's that's That's a good hypothesis for why. Actually, this was funny. One of the papers I tracked down that they were citing here showed evidence that people who score higher on a scale of sex guilt are less likely to believe in psychics. And I know, is that weird? But the authors, like, I don't know how to make sense out of that. But the authors thought that it was because if you have a lot of sex skill, you really need to believe that nobody else can see what you're thinking.

0:22:35 Thomas: A couple of great point makers, yeah.

0:22:46 Thomas: Whoa.

0:22:56 Thomas: What? The of Okay, that's

0:23:12 Lindsey: So it's like motivated reasoning. I just thought that was hilarious.

0:23:14 Thomas: Great. Mm.

0:23:15 Lindsey: Yeah. Anyway, moving on. Is also some some evidence suggesting that neuroticism correlates positively with paranormal beliefs. And this probably converges with the findings that we were talking about before, about the connection between personal stress and reaching for explanations that offer you a sense of understanding and being able to sort personal control over your life. So people who are high on neuroticism are more reactive to stress. And so that could increase needs for explanations to sort of simplify complexity, right?

Addition to the big five, the authors also examine a trait from the dark triad in relation to belief in astrology. We've talked about the dark triade before. It's narcissism, Machiavellianism, which is that calculating relating manipulativeness, and psychopathy, which is like low levels of empathy and remorse and high levels of impulsivity. In particular, the authors predicted that narcissism would predict belief in astrology, because narcissism tends to be very self -focused and astrology is very self -focused. And think that that is potentially a genuinely interesting connection, but I also suspect that they may have just, like, measured all three and only talked about the one that it actually correlated, like it feels a little p hacky to me, the way that they explain this, um, I I suspect that they may have found the correlations and built the paper around it, but whatever.

0:24:17 Thomas: -hmm, okay. Oh. Wow, harsh claims, what?

0:24:33 Lindsey: Don't know for sure, but it have to find out, um, we've got big five traits, narcissism, and addition to these personality traits, the researchers also evaluated whether intelligence intelligence correlates with belief in astrology, because intelligence has been connected to other pseudoscientific beliefs in past research. Generally, more intelligent people less likely to believe unsupported things. That sounds a little bit judgy. But the best way that I've heard these things connected is actually not, ghosts are dumb, and therefore people, dumb people, are more likely to believe in them.

0:24:34 Thomas: What do the stars say about it, or the planets, darn?

0:25:05 Thomas: Yeah.

0:25:06 Lindsey: It comes back to the idea that that things like astrology, conspiracy theories, and so on are frameworks that simplify and make sense of things that are incredibly complex. And so intelligence might relate to belief in those things for the same reason that life stress and instability and crisis are related to increases in those beliefs. It's probably a proxy for needing to simplify and explain and gain a sense of control over complexity.

0:25:16 Thomas: Mm.

0:25:30 Thomas: -hm, yeah, and it's easier to just be like, yeah, the planets did it, than to understand you, housing market, yeah.

0:25:36 Lindsey: No, exactly. Most things are hideously complex if you want to gain a deep understanding of them. So yeah, these things do meet that need, I think. Important variable here may not be intelligence at all. As you were saying a few minutes ago, measures of IQ are highly correlated with things like educational achievement and socioeconomic status. And so it's entirely possible that those are actually the relevant causes, um, yeah, also a potential direct causal connection there as well, so

0:25:39 Thomas: Mm. Yeah. But I'll tell you this, as much as we you complaints about measures of intelligence and et cetera, et cetera, there's a lot of complicated stuff there, but I think if you wanted to gain anything from a measure of intelligence, like if you want to learn something useful, I think it would be like, how well does your concept of reality match up with reality? You know, like that'd be a useful thing to know about people, you know, like I could see that making sense if you measured everything correctly, being like, well, yeah, people who believe in bullshit, you would would hope show up as less intelligent, just because it seems like that should be some sort of measure of intelligence, but maybe not, I don't know, that's just a quick thought I had, what do you think about it?

0:26:22 Lindsey: Yeah. No.

0:26:38 Lindsey: I think that's fair, yeah, um, generally speaking, um, tests are supposed to capture how difficult you find it to make sense out of things, right, or to understand things, so yeah, I I think that what you're saying should be part of that for sure, um, so let's talk about how they did this study, so had 264 participants, not terrible, yeah.

0:26:46 Thomas: Yeah. It Seems like a lot.

0:26:57 Lindsey: Um, participants were overwhelmingly women, so 87 of the sample's women, they were mostly between the ages of 25 to 34, 24-34. So sounds to me like they assessed age categorically. Sometimes you see them do this, you select a category in which your age falls. I hate it when they do this. Like it's a continuous variable, just measure their age.

0:27:00 Thomas: Hmm. Uh, yeah. Yeah.

0:27:15 Lindsey: So most of them were 25 to 34 women.

0:27:18 Thomas: Did we talk about the, I'm about the gender mix of people who believe in astrology yet?

0:27:21 Lindsey: No, but that it does tend to be a little bit more prevalent among women.

0:27:24 Thomas: Yeah. That's what I would, that's what I would think. So they end up with this unbalanced sample because they needed people who believed in it or, okay.

0:27:24 Lindsey: Yeah. They do this on purpose. So here's how they recruited. They recruited through word of mouth on Facebook. Most of the studies we talk about are convenient samples, but like they're not random samples, but they're convenient samples and then they're convenience samples. And it sounds to me like they got this sample like through essentially their own social networks. They're not super specific about how they advertised it, but it sounds like the researchers like threw this up on their Facebooks and were like, we're doing this study, you know, participate if you want to.

0:27:41 Thomas: Yep.

0:28:02 Thomas: Hey, dummies who believe that. No, I am just kidding.

0:28:03 Lindsey: Yeah. And some some serious concerns for me about the generalizability of the findings. Like, yeah.

0:28:06 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah. Because also a lot of correlations could exist between people who are scrolling Facebook more. Right.

0:28:15 Lindsey: Relationships that we're going to talk about, we need to interpret very carefully.

0:28:18 Thomas: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

0:28:29 Lindsey: I if they are sort getting people through their own social networks, the sample is probably homogenous in other ways as well that they didn't measure, right? Culturally and things. Yeah, I don't know. That

0:28:38 Thomas: Right. Right, right, right? A good point. Is instantly thought like, oh, is this going to be waspy or something, you because of like that tends to be a problem with people who study things because there's already like the are already skewed demographically, right? And so I'm, it's just occurring to me, is astrology big in the black community at all? I feel like I don't hear about it as much, but I also don't know. Interesting.

0:28:45 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:29:00 Lindsey: I looked this up and don't remember there being a huge difference between black and white. I think it was, I to recall off the top of my head, I'm going to get it wrong. But I Don't remember that being a huge difference if there was any. So there are cultural differences. If we look across countries. And I think that's a point worth coming back to. In terms of their measures, to measure belief in astrology, they administered a subset of items from the Belief in Astrology Inventory. Good are liquor items. They include statements like, "Horoscopes predict a person's future." "The way I relate to other people depends on my zodiac sign." And then they also include statements that essentially mean that you don't believe in astrology, like "Knowing a person's zodiac sign is irrelevant" and "the supposed negative influence of heavenly bodies is absurd," right? And so they reverse code those.

0:29:13 Thomas: Right. Except For this, "This heavenly body," right? Sorry. It's a good dad joke pickup line that, you know, I one in occasionally.

0:29:48 Lindsey: Jesus, is okay, you feel better now Okay. Yes. Yes. That's

0:29:57 Thomas: I told you you had a heavenly body would you hold it against me?

0:30:03 Thomas: I'm talking to Mars. I'm telling you the planet of Mars. I sent out a radio transmission to Mars about that. That's what that was.

0:30:11 Lindsey: Was terrible. Like, I'm, I'm, I'm very distracted by how bad that was. That's, wow. Okay, to that scale, to the Belief in Astrology Scale, they also included a single item asking how well participants thought astrology is supported by scientific research. They use this as a separate variable. And I found that kind of interesting. So as we're going to see, those those two measures capture something fairly different, which is interesting. Measure the big five personality traits with something called the IPIP30 personality scale, which is a validated measure of the big 5 personality traits. They also used a subscale of the short dark triad of personality scale to assess narcissism. And we have, Yeah, we've talked about this very measure before.

0:30:29 Thomas: Hmm.

0:30:50 Thomas: Have talked about that, right. It's so sinister. I feel like it should be a gang or something, you know, like the Dark Triad.

0:30:57 Lindsey: Dark triad.

0:30:58 Thomas: Yeah. They do battle with the Yakuza a lot, I think.

0:30:58 Lindsey: Yeah. Uh -huh. Yeah. It's, I mean, it is dark, right? Yeah. So the narcissistic grandiosity subscale of this includes items like, "I know that I am special because everyone keeps telling me so." And "I insist on getting the respect that I deserve." So you've got that sort of like grandiose self-view as well as the sense of entitlement, right?

0:31:04 Thomas: Yeah.

0:31:19 Thomas: Want to know if that means like, Brad you know, Pitt is like, well, yeah, I mean, I think I answer yes to that question. But am I, does that mean I'm like a bad person? I mean a lot of people think I'm pretty special. I'm Brad Pitt. Like, come on. What am I going to answer? No. Oh, no. I don't think I was special at all. Like that must be tough for celebrities, you know?

0:31:30 Lindsey: Yeah. It probably is. I, all kinds of things with with narcissism inventories that, like, for for one reason or another somebody might endorse one item, but that's generally the only one they would endorse, so they'd still show up as low on narcissism, but yeah.

0:31:44 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Right, right. Okay. Just hope someone's thinking of the celebrities for once, you

0:31:51 Lindsey: When will people think of solicitors? Yeah, um, way that they measured intelligence is kind of interesting. So they used a, they used three-dimensional rotation items from something called the International Cognitivability Resource. You've likely seen these problems before or something like them. So they present participants with these 2D images of 3D cube things.

0:32:12 Thomas: Oh, you literally mean that like, I thought it was three dimensional and like, there's going to be three different like of inquiry here, but you literally means like images with two dimensions. Okay, wow.

0:32:22 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah. So it's like a cube kind of shape that they have on the card as the target image. And then you have like four different options that could be rotated versions of that cube image. And you're supposed to select the one that Actually is the rotated image, right? So the to mentally rotate an object and solve these problems assesses an aspect of spatial reasoning. And I think it's worth noting that this specifically is what they're using as their proxy for intelligence and correlating it with belief in astrology. I mean, rotation ability is, in fact, very highly correlated with other measures of general intelligence. So I'm not saying this is like a bad choice or anything. It just didn't feel like a fully explained choice to me.

0:32:35 Thomas: Love those.

0:32:58 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah totally.

0:33:02 Lindsey: It's another thing that I'm like, I don't know. I think you guys just had like a survey with a bunch of shit in it. You found these correlations.

0:33:08 Thomas: Oh, And this was the the one that worked maybe Yeah. Yeah.

0:33:09 Lindsey: And yeah, that's what it reads like. But I don't know that for sure. Yeah.

0:33:13 Thomas: That Yeah, that's interesting. I note, I mean, I've always loved standardized testing and everything, and I'm realizing now, like, everything that's used for these tests, like, that I think is the most fun thing. I'm always like, oh, that's so fun, I want to do those tests. Oh.

0:33:27 Lindsey: Yeah, I used to take uh practice LSATs for fun because they had the logic problems in them. Yeah.

0:33:31 Thomas: I love those just.

0:33:33 Lindsey: Those are the best, yeah. So what do they find? So before we get to the focal results, I think it's worth noting that the average level of belief in astrology in their sample seemed a little high to me. So, was a one to five scale, you could get a score between one and five, and the average was 3.27. So that's like slightly above the midpoint of the scale. And that means that, on average, right, the average response on each item was slightly in the direction of endorsing belief in astrology. And I would hope that in a random population sample, the averaged response would be probably still near the midpoint, but it would be below it, right? Talked about the fact that belief in astrology is prevalent, but even with the high prevalence, I would expect the average on the scale to be below the midpoint,

0:34:12 Thomas: Based on how many people tend to believe in it. Gotcha.

0:34:12 Lindsey: Yeah, Yeah, so this is a highly astrology believing sample relative to even a highly astrology-believing population. So, um, on to correlations. Belief in astrology was significantly positively correlated with openness, agreeableness, and narcissism, which is interesting. So people who said they believed in astrology more strongly were likely to be more open to two experiences, more agreeable, and more narcissistic. But the correlations were hella weak. So they were between 0.1 and 0.2, and they were significant, but between .1 and 0.3 is very weak. That's a very messy, that's a noisy correlation. People who said that they believed more strongly in astrology were more likely to have lower scores on that measure of spatial intelligence. And though, it was very weak that the correlation was negative 0.16. So in astrology was also, unsurprisingly, positively correlated with how much participants thought astrology was supported by scientific research. But interestingly, this correlation was also not super strong.

0:35:03 Thomas: Yeah.

0:35:17 Thomas: Like what I said earlier, maybe some people are like, I don't give a shit if it's scientific. I believe in it.

0:35:19 Lindsey: Yeah, Exactly, Right. Yeah. I think that that's exactly what this speaks to. The fact that, yeah, some people are totally comfortable with using frameworks other than scientific ones to justify by their beliefs. That's

0:35:29 Thomas: Gosh, I am definitely a little biased in all this, but like these, I know you said the correlations are weak, but if those correlations were like one to one, it perfectly describes the people I know who believe in astrology. Like it just a Hundred percent, like they're open people, the theory people, they're liberal people, they're opened people, and again this is probably just a cherry pick sample of my, you know, just who I've come across, but like they're open, they're all that, but like the come across is so narcissistic to me because like, yeah, you, okay, a ghost is haunting you and the, you know, Mars is telling you what to do or whatever, like it, yeah, no, you, they would probably think something being scientific is a bit of a bad word sometimes.

0:35:40 Lindsey: Very interesting, yeah.

0:36:05 Lindsey: Nope, that's an archetype that I've run into as well, right. Um, actually it makes me think there's a Tim Minchin thing called Storm where he's

0:36:07 Thomas: Oh. I don't think I've seen it. He's great though

0:36:12 Lindsey: Yeah, it's good, it's like a beat poem kind of thing, yeah. He's great. Um, so that's, so that're correlations, right? The correlation between thinking it was scientifically supported and believing in astrology was 0.35. I would have expected them to be correlated more in like the 0.6, 0.7 range, but no, they're not. And I think for exactly the reasons that you just said, right? Okay.

0:36:14 Thomas: Yeah Hmm.

0:36:31 Lindsey: So they had their simple correlations and then they did regression because of course they did. It was just for us. We know that agreeableness, openness, narcissism, and intelligence have simple correlations with belief in astrology. But when we put those variables together into to a Russian model, along with all the other personality traits, and also included gender and age as covariates. Which of these variables are unique, significant predictors of belief in astrology? So here's what they found. So narcissism, intelligence, and belief that astrology is scientifically supported all retained unique, insignificant relationships with belief in astrology. Astrology. So all of those things, unique predictors, even when you've got everything in the model. Openness was not a significant predictor after accounting with the relationships with other

0:36:28 Thomas: Interesting. All, all right.

0:37:16 Thomas: Interesting.

0:37:16 Lindsey: Variables. Yeah, I found that interesting. To the extent that there's a relationship there, it seems like the variance is accounted for by the relationships with other things, which

0:37:17 Thomas: Do we know what those other things are, gotcha.

0:37:24 Lindsey: They don't report enough information to know which variables were accounting for it, but we could figure that that out if we had their data, um, do some mediation stuff. Interestingly, right, extroversion, if you recall, did not show a simple correlation with belief in astrology, but once they had everything else in the model and they controlled for all these other things, it did show up as a significant negative predictor in the regression model, yeah.

0:37:27 Thomas: Wait,

0:37:46 Lindsey: So introverts were more likely to endorse it. It could be a fluke, I don't know, that it's meaningful, um,

0:37:45 Thomas: Negative predictor, what, the fuck yeah that that's wow, I would have a hard time I'm believing that, but you know, you've already said the science thing sucks, so I don't believe it.

0:37:56 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:37:56 Thomas: No.

0:37:58 Lindsey: To come up with some speculations to make sense out of this, but probably not worth dwelling on because, yeah,

0:38:02 Thomas: Yeah. I can't, I can'T even think of what it would be. Can always just be statistical noise kind of, right?

0:38:08 Lindsey: It could be. Yeah, especially since it's like in the opposite direction of what had been found in past stuff. Like it's very possible that it's not a meaningful thing here. Um, anyway, so that was interesting, in addition to the focal variables, gender and age were also significant predictors. So women were more likely than men to believe in astrology, and older participants in the sample yeah.

0:38:17 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. I was wondering where that was going to go with the age. Interesting. I wonder why that is.

0:38:30 Lindsey: Yeah. Older participants but it's a relatively young sample overall, so I don't know exactly what that means.

0:38:35 Thomas: Uh, okay. Can't look, this is a really interesting science thingy. I wish they'd gotten a better sample, you

0:38:36 Lindsey: Right. Too, yeah, might be be worth running this with a more diverse sample.

0:38:44 Thomas: Add it to the, to think we're the only foundations docket of research we need to do yeah

0:38:49 Lindsey: Yeah. Of interesting science thingies we need to do. So narcissism and belief that astrology was scientifically supported were the two strongest predictors of belief in astrology and the regression model. Those those are their findings. What do the authors say we should take away from these findings? Speculate that astrology may select for grandiose individual differences and reinforce them, meaning that people who have grandiose self -views like narcissists may be particularly attracted to explanatory frameworks that reflect their self -focus, but also that the use of these self -focused explanatory framework may also cultivate grandiose, self -use. The predictions of horoscopes are extremely self - focus and they also tend to be positively framed.

Both of those things are very good for somebody with grandiose self -views and sort of reinforcing those. Again, I think this is probably the most interesting and worthwhile thing about their paper. Think it would be super interesting to do additional research on how different ideologies and explanatory frameworks might select for self-focus and also enhance self -focus. That seems interesting and important, and it's a critique of astrology that I'd never heard before. And astrology isn't the only belief system that is like this. Like, example that jumped to mind that I think might do a similar thing and might be worth doing research on is like the bootstraps conservatism thing. Right, that's puts you at the center of your own hero

0:38:50 Thomas: Right. Yeah, yeah true.

0:40:08 Lindsey: Narrative, essentially. Essentially. That that's a pretty interesting way to criticize belief systems like that as well, right? There's a lot of belief systems that I think are self -focused and might be cultivating bad habits in that way. So,

0:40:10 Thomas: Yeah. Totally. Causes you to like reframe your experiences in a way that'll enhance your belief in the very thing that's causing you to reframe those experiences, yeah.

0:40:25 Lindsey: Exactly. Exactly, yeah, So yeah. I think it's a really interesting idea. It does seem worth doing some additional research to, if I'm right about how this was constructed, their study was not actually hypothesis driven. This was exploratory. That in a more hypothesis driven kind of context, I think would be very interesting to try to figure out what the mechanisms are here. Was the point that I wanted to focus on most. Weirdly, the authors also float the possibility that the relationship between astrology belief and narcissism is driven by millennials, because of course, it's millennials fault, right?

0:40:27 Thomas: Oh.

0:40:54 Thomas: All right. Now, I hate this science thing, even it's skewed older in their sample, or is it that millennials old.

0:40:59 Lindsey: Yeah. But I I mean, what does older mean, right?

0:41:01 Thomas: Yeah, that's fair. I, we're still not like old old in the terms of the whole population, right? I mean, yeah.

0:41:02 Lindsey: Yeah, yeah. But I think that the sample was relatively young. So it's possible that millennials are like in the top half of the age bracket or whatever of the people that they were sampling.

0:41:17 Thomas: But I I still hate it.

0:41:19 Lindsey: I definitely hate it. I think it's stupid, right. Didn't make sense to me. The way that they explained it didn't makes sense. They just kind of threw out like, oh, yeah we know that millennials or narcissistic and and also, I don't know, maybe they believe more in astrology.

0:41:19 Thomas: Millennials are killing the not astrology market, the opposite

0:41:33 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, I was so mad about this that I went and found a paper that it wasn't focused on the astrology bit, but they measured a bunch of things in this cohort of people born between 1984 and 1989, which is millennials, and they did happen to assess belief in astrology, among other things, and only 11% of that cohort believed in astrology so do not pin this shit on us, please.

0:41:35 Thomas: Yeah. Thank you.

0:41:56 Lindsey: Um, that's, I think that that's nonsense and I didn't like it, but it was like a throwaway point. Um, up thoughts, limitations, I don't think this is a terrible science thingy. The main complaints I have are that there are a lot of cues that this was exploratory in a way that maybe they weren't totally upfront about. Some of the things read as they found the correlations and built the story around it. Um, donno and second, yeah, the sample, sample really does lead a lot, or leave a lot to be desired.

0:41:56 Thomas: Good.

0:42:22 Thomas: Yeah.

0:42:23 Lindsey: It's mostly a sample of young adult women. We don't know anything about the nationalities or cultural backgrounds here, but one could imagine that context would be pretty important to understanding what astrology means to any given group of participants. You know, in Western cultures, it occupy a place of super high cultural status, but there are still lots of places in the world where it does. So many parts of Southeast Asia, for instance, and in India, it occupies a a higher cultural status. And so I think in those cultural settings, the relationships between belief and personality could look very, very, different than

0:42:27 Thomas: Yeah.

0:42:56 Thomas: You would expect them to be weaker, like, if more, if it's just more, more culturally acceptable to believe a certain thing, then, of definitionally, you'd think, well, then just more average people will believe it because that's just going along with society.

0:42:59 Lindsey: Yes, exactly.

0:43:09 Lindsey: Right. And I could also imagine, I don't know much about how astrology looks different there, but I do know that those areas of the world often are higher on collectivism than the is.

0:43:19 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. So it could be like, oh, the year is affecting everybody, kind of like how I said in the beginning. Interesting.

0:43:26 Lindsey: And Yeah, I think it's entirely possible that the that astrology is framed could look very different and maybe not look as self -focused. So So not the greatest science thing in the world. But like, were some things that prompted new questions for me. And I think that that is valuable. So, I don'T have like maximal fully engorged palps over this, but like, not zero palps, I

0:43:26 Thomas: Yeah, but I always don't know how strong the correlations need to be to say something like, did you know that, you astrologers or people who believe in astrology tend to be narcissistic? You correlation should that be in your opinion?

0:44:02 Lindsey: Lot higher than they had, for sure.

0:44:03 Thomas: Yeah. You know? Right. So it's like, to me, this is kind of just like a bad science thingy because it's not supported by, you guess I don't know if they framed it that way, but if the headline line that I saw was the, this group of people tends to be more narcissistic. I feel like that needs to be a little bit higher of a correlation to be comfortable with that claim.

0:44:04 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:44:20 Lindsey: Think that that is a critique of the framing here. It's probably it probably is too strong to a correlation of point one to point two is just like you are right to say that, like, if you meet someone and you find out that they believe in astrology, you don't necessarily know a whole lot about what their narcissism score is.

0:44:38 Thomas: Not a great science thingy, but a very interesting breakdown. And Hey, side note, we're going to be doing Q and a, and I think patrons are getting that early. So we're doing that monthly Q and A. you If want to hear it now, get it on Patreon right now. Now, if, not, it'll come out probably next week for everybody. But we're looking forward to that. Just trying to do some extra things for our patrons, especially given the fact that, got you a nice little influx in support of Lindsay doing this full time, which I love. I'm happy to see.

0:45:05 Thomas: So give it back to the patrons a little bit. Right. Well, thanks for that. Please do again support the show. patreon.com/seriouspod. Lindsay's job now, so it would be really great to keep Lindsay afloat, keep the show afloat, so please consider pledging, get some perks, get some bonus stuff.

0:45:05 Lindsey: Yeah, very heartwarming. Yeah, it is. Mm. Been a surprising amount of interest in me actually following through on the promise to, like, edit people's papers at a, at a high enough Patreon level.

0:45:30 Thomas: That's okay, non -zero chance that happens, everybody get your paper looked at, I might write a paper just to get the Lindsay treatment on it, I don't know what it would be, all for listening everybody, and we'll see you next time.

0:45:49 Clip: Thank you so much for listening to Serious Inquiries Only. If you like the show, the absolute best thing you can do is support us at patreon.com/seriouspod. The second best thing you can do, is please share it on social media or by word of mouth. Speaking of social media, follow me on Twitter at Serious Pod. If would like to be Facebook friends, send me a request at facebook.com Thomas podcast. If not up for that level of intimacy, that's fine. Maybe you want to join the discussion at facebook.com slash groups slash SIO members. Thank you again for listening. We'll see you next time.