Over at Culture of Science Sheril Kirshenbaum posts a figure from the NSF displaying what proportion of those without high school educations and those with college educations accept the scientific status of astrology. It’s pretty clear to me that this is the ASTROSCI variable from the General Social Survey. It asks:
Would you say that astrology is very scientific, sort of scientific, or not at all scientific?
It’s also nice that this question was only asked in the latter half of the 2000s. So it’s timely in terms of demographic breakdowns. Speaking of which, here are a whole host of classes and their attitudes toward astrology’s scientific status:
Very scientific
Sort of scientific
Not at all scientific
Male
5
26
69
Female
5
30
65
Age 18-34
8
34
58
Age 35-64
4
26
70
Age 65-
4
24
72
White
4
25
72
Black
11
38
51
Hispanic
8
40
51
Extreme liberal
7
31
62
Liberal
5
30
65
Slightly iberal
4
28
68
Moderate
5
34
61
Slightly conservative
5
25
70
Conservative
6
19
75
Extreme conservative
6
18
76
No high school diploma
9
41
50
High school diploma
7
32
62
Junior college
4
28
68
Bachelor
2
17
80
Graduate degree
1
13
85
Atheist and agnostic
6
23
71
Higher power
4
28
68
Believes in god sometimes
7
24
70
Believe in god, but with doubts
4
27
69
Know god exists
6
30
65
Protestant
5
27
68
Catholic
5
31
64
Jewish
6
16
78
No religion
7
28
65
Bible word of god
6
31
64
Bible inspired word of god
5
28
67
Bible book of fables
6
25
70
Human beings developed from animals
6
28
66
Human beings don’t develop from animals
5
26
69
But what about intelligence? To look at that I used the WORDSUM variable, which is a 10-question vocabulary test which has a 0.70 correlation with IQ. Below are the attitudes toward astrology by WORDSUM score (0 = 0 …