Chinese Zodiac: Superstition, Economics & Destiny

As we celebrate Chinese New Year and enter the year of the fire monkey, join Robert and Joe for a Stuff to Blow Your Mind exploration of the Chinese zodiac and some interesting studies related to its impact on birth rates, economics and individual destiny. As always, you can take astrology with a grain of salt, but the impact on human behavior and culture is undeniable.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, wasn't it stuff to blow your mind?
My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe mcformix. So Robert, Yes,
a horse, a rat, a dragon, and a metal pig

(00:24):
walk into a bar. Okay, the dragon says I'm a dragon.
Everybody else leave and they do because he's a dragon.
Well that would that would make sense. We're of course
talking about the Chinese zodiac here, and you basically just
described my family. Yeah, because I am my zodiac sign.
The Chinese zodiac is horse, my son's is dragon, my

(00:47):
my wife's is actually pig. But for the longest she
thought she was a rat. How can you be confused?
I thought it was just the year you were born. Um,
it's easy to make that mistake, especially if you know
you're just sort of going on a surface level understanding
of it. Particularly the surface in question is a place
man at a Chinese restaurants niet That is exactly where

(01:10):
I learned about the Chinese zodiac first when I was
a child, and they're probably the early nineteen nineties. I
remember my family was one time meeting at a Chinese
restaurant and the place mat at my seat had all
the drawings of the animals and years listed under them,
and that's where I got to find out that I
am a tiger, which sounded really cool at the time,
but now it I find out that that's not such

(01:32):
a cool thing. Yeah, it gets a little more complicated
than that. And and uh and in terms of just
being able to easily mistake what your animal might be,
it's because the Chinese zodiac is an astrological birth chart
based upon the Looni solar calendar year. So it doesn't
just match the solar calendar that we use right the

(01:53):
months or lunar, but the years are solar, so that
means it's a little off from the Gregorian calendar. And
there's a little bit of a drift on the relative
start and stop points. So if you just look at
the animal name and a year, you could get it wrong.
If you have a birthday in January February, Um, where
we see this overlap, and your wife does have a

(02:15):
birthday in January February, Yeah, she has a February birthday.
So for the longest she thought that she was a rat,
but in in in actuality she was pig. Now there
are also elements associated with certain years. Right, So she's
not just a pig, she's what a wooden pig and
earth pig. Oh, she's a metal pig, which I think
is the probably it sounds pretty good to me. Metal gear,

(02:37):
solid metal pig. Yeah, they're they're at different astrological versions
of each one. So you know, metal pig, water pig,
would pig, fire pig, and earth pig would be the
complete pig collection. Uh. And just to to give everyone
an idea of where we are right now as we're
recording this in late January two thousand sixteen, we are

(02:58):
about to enter into the year of the fire monkey.
What what was this previous year? Here? We're exiting the
year of the goat. Okay, so bye bye goat. All
babies born today still goats, but pretty soon they will
be fire monkeys instead, that's right. Yeah, there are twelve
different animals involved in the zodiac. Uh, and they go

(03:19):
in a particular or you have rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog,
and then pig and then it goes back around. Okay,
so we'll get to know those animals a little bit
more as the episode goes on, but we should have
a little disclaimer here at the beginning. If you're like,
wait a minute, I thought we were gonna be talking
about science in the Science podcast. So we are going

(03:39):
to be talking about Chinese astrology in this episode. But
it's worth noting that we're not necessarily endorsing Chinese astrology
or any form of astrology or divination as an accurate
tool for learning about reality, but instead examining it as
a thing that exerts a powerful influence over human culture
and behavior. Yeah, the mythology g and the symbolism is fascinating,

(04:02):
and it's also potent in Eastern culture, and we can
actually study the ramifications out of it from an economic standpoint,
from birthrate standpoint. Um, it's all really interesting stuff. So yeah,
if you're if you're rolling your eyes at the astrology,
bear with us, because we're gonna get two numbers. We're
gonna get to the science. Okay, we should check in
real quick with what the stuff to blow your minds

(04:24):
animal signs are before we move on. So, as we said,
I'm a tiger, but it turns out I'm married to
a rat. Rats run run strong in this world, and
I appreciate their power and craftiness. Our other host on
this podcast, Christian Christian Seger, is a snake married to
a rabbit, which sounds like a very fortuitous union. Yeah,

(04:45):
and uh no, no, what are you again? See a
fire pig? I don't think we know, we know he's
not a metal pig, but I'm not sure where he
falls in line with the with the other descriptors here.
He's a magic pig maybe. Okay. So, as we said,
there are twelve signs in the Chinese zodiac, and if
you're familiar, primarily with the Western zodiac, there will be

(05:08):
some similarities and some differences. Now in the Western zodiac,
we primarily judge things by the time of the year
that you were born. It's seasonal in nature. And I
think there are some other elements to the traditional Chinese
astrology right there. There are things about the time of
the day you were born or the time of year.
But this this one thing that makes it onto the

(05:29):
Chinese place mats sort of the easily recognizable large scale
view of Chinese birth characteristics. In in this cultural form
of astrology is based on the year you were born,
and there there are twelve years in this cycle. That
they are those twelve animals, And what's the story? Where
do these animals come from? And where do we get

(05:49):
these ideas about what their personality characteristics are? Well, this
is the way the story goes. And this is just
one version of the story. So if you grew up
with this or have encountered in a book somewhere, you
may have a slightly different version in your head. But
it rolls out like this, according to the legend the
Jade Emperor. So who's Who's the Jade Emperor. He's a
He's the heavenly Grandfather. He's a mythological ruler, very important

(06:12):
in Taoism. He's an emperor in a myth rich ancient time. Okay,
and he wants to create a method of recording the
passage of time. So he does the logical thing. He
organizes a swim race on his birthday and invites a
bunch of animals. Okay, And now are these all water
animals or they finished? No, none of them were. They're

(06:34):
the ones we've been talking about before. Yes, pigs and
goats and stuff and plus plus cat was also invited
according to the version I read, so so that would
make it thirteen animals. Right, yes, but as we're gonna see,
things aren't gonna really work out for the cat all
that well. And then this is this fun story. By
the way, I actually acted this out with my son
yesterday using toy animals. So if if you want to,

(06:57):
if you need a rainy day activity for your your child,
I recommend this. That's so beautiful. Okay, so let's go
roll it, Jade Emperor's says, go, you know, the start
sort of pistol goes off. Cat and rat are standing there.
They're the slowest swimmers, so what they do is they
asked to ride on the ox. But then once they're
out in the water, the rat pushes the cat off

(07:18):
into the water and the cat as I guess, washed
away by the current. And uh. And then the ox
moves in and the rat jumps off of the ox
is back and gets there first. The first place goes
to to rat. Okay, so the oxes fording the river
like an Oregon trail, and the rat rides on his back,
jumps ahead. Sort of cheats. Is this maybe sort of cheating? Well, yeah,

(07:39):
it's cheating, but hen he's also using his intellect and
he's using he comes up with a creative way. He
knows he's not a great swimmer. He knows the ox
is pretty good. This seems like a logical plant. Yeah yeah,
rats are crafty. They're like Templeton in Charlotte's Web exactly.
So next comes the tiger, just you know, plunges head
first across and wait a minute, can tiger swim? The
cat can swim? Why can the tiger swim? Well, the

(08:01):
cat can swim. The cat was just pushed off. Not
a good it's not a good swimmer. The tiger can swim,
makes it across. Next comes the rabbit. Rabbits not a
good swimmer, but the rabbit crosses the river by hopping
on the stones. Then comes dragon and dragons. Of course
is gonna be very important. We're gonna discuss dragon in
in more depth here in a bit. But being a
flying cosmic creature, he could have easily come in first,

(08:25):
but along the way he realized he needed to stop
and generate some rain to control the weather and then
continue on his way. So he wasn't even really that
concerned with winning this thing. He had more important duties
to attend to write, so he's a magnanimous runner up.
He could have easily won by flying, but he he
had other things on his agenda exactly. Now next comes, uh, well,

(08:48):
my sign and Christian sign. Uh so, here comes snake
and horse. Alright, now, horse pretty good swimmer, So horses
gonna gonna just swim across the river. Snake sneaks aboard,
wraps around the horse's leg, and then when the horse
is about to climb out of the river and earn
its place, horse sees the snake freaks out because horses

(09:10):
are afraid of snakes, and the snake jumps off and
secures the next place in the line, followed by the horse.
It's a little trickery on the snake's part. Okay, I
like these trickster animals. Now next comes in this order goat, monkey,
and rooster. But the interesting thing here is that they
all apparently work rather well together, and the Jade Emperor

(09:31):
is very appreciative. This is a good, good teamwork. These
three do they build a raft? Did I read that?
I believe so. I think that's in some of the version,
that that's their their method of teamwork. Otherwise, I guess,
you know, they could pile on each other's heads or
something and walk across that smart. Okay, who's next, Well,
next comes dog, and Dog is the strongest swimmer of
the bunch, but he's also easily distracted. So basically he

(09:52):
just played and splashed in the water for most of
the race and then realized, oh I need to actually
get across. Man, are dogs great? And then come pig,
who rather stereotypically here falls asleep after eating during the journey,
so he's a very late arrival to the other side.
So this is in the classic Tortoise and the Hair story,
the pig is the hair. In this version, he just

(10:14):
decides to take a nap. Yeah, yeah, and uh uh.
And then finally, finally, the cat makes its way across
the river after being betrayed by the rat earlier. But
the cat is too late to qualify, so the cat
does not make it into the official Chinese zodiac and
is it's instead just left on the outside hating the
rat for all eternity. Man, that's harsh. Yeah, So it's

(10:36):
a it's it's a fun little story. It's it doesn't
give a perfect description of all the the the the
astrological significance of each animal. It gives you a kind
of a base understanding and it's far better than some
of the other There's actually one version where apparently the
Buddha simply calls all the animals together in names years
after them, which sounds like a pretty boring party. Yeah,
why not have a river race? And you can't make

(11:00):
a reality show out of Buddha naming people? Yeah, So, John,
let's just roll through these, uh, these various animals just
one final time here to to just lay out their
positive and negative attributes. Yeah, because we will be talking
about in this episode the personality characteristics that are typically
attributed to each of these animals in the twelve year cycle.

(11:21):
If you're born under the year, these are the attributes
that are supposed to belong to you. So the first
one we've got is the rat. Now what do they
say about the rat? Well, the rat is innovative, opportunistic,
very organized, but prone to uh letting his temper get
out of the out of control and possibly his or
her agreed. Now, I've got to give credit where credit

(11:43):
is due. I was reading this out loud to my
wife Rachel last night, and she was like, sounds like
Walter White from Breaking Bad. I was like, Walter White,
that's exactly right. That is the perfect rat. Okay, so
that's a good sort of modern fictional embodiment. Uh. Next
up the the Ox. Of course, oxes honest, conservative, patient,
but the Ox can be stubborn when pushed and can

(12:05):
be slow to start things. Now, there are a couple
of fictional versions we came up with to match this.
Sounds kind of like Ned Stark from Game of Thrones,
kind of an honest, respectable, but conservative person. Another option
I came up with is Ellen Ripley from the Alien series.
That's a good one, you know, because she is essentially
a She's one of the few heroes who's really a

(12:27):
rule follower. She's all about obeying protocol. We need to
do the right thing here and not break quarantine. You know.
She she's conservative, but she's patient, she's on top of things,
and she doesn't want to budge from her position. And
unlike the astrological Ox, she actually gets the cat across
the river. Okay. Next we have the tiger, right, this

(12:51):
is mine. So they say about the tiger that the
tiger is powerful, brave, and risk taker, but can also
be very brash and offensive. Full feather is caused trouble.
So what came to my mind is Fox Mulder from
The X Files. Oh yeah, you know, he's he's he's
a risk taker, he's courageous, he stands up for what
he believes in, but he really just makes people mad.

(13:14):
He says the wrong thing and he makes offensive comments
all the time. Okay, I feel like, you know the
tiger characters when we probably see a lot in fiction. Um,
because we like we like characters like that. We like
our characters to be strong and confident. But I also
have certain pitfalls. The one that comes to my mind,
and this is because I'm currently watching a MCS Halt
and catch Fire. Lee pays his character Joe McMillan um

(13:37):
brilliant risk taker but also just a life wrecking idiot
at times. Alright, Next up we have the Rabbit. Gentle, talented, diplomatic,
but maybe a little bit shy and sentimental. Okay, what
have you got for the rabbit? The only thing, the
only one that came to mind instantly here is Luna
love Good in Harry Potter. Oh that's a pretty good one,

(13:58):
all right. Next is in it very important one dragon imagination, energetic, dramatic,
but can be moody, can be a perfectionist, and uh,
and of course, as we'll discussed, can their destructive elements
to the dragon as well. Huh. You know, I had
a hard time thinking of a good example of a
dragon in fiction. One that obviously came to mind is

(14:20):
another one from Game of Thrones, de Naris targ Arian. Yeah,
but then again, I don't know how well she fits
that because I don't really think of her as dramatic
or even necessarily moody, but certainly that that imagination and energy,
and uh, she's very determined. Yeah, I think she she

(14:40):
is prone to being a little moody, especially later in
the series. Yeah, I guess so, but yeah, it's not
a perfect fit though. Of course, she is the mother
of dragons, so it seems like it should fit. Yeah,
We're gonna have too many Game of Thrones characters in
this It's just such a rich world to draw various
character personalities from. I guess. Yeah, Well the next from Snake.

(15:00):
The snake is graceful, intuitive and wise, but prone to
stinginess and unscrupulous behavior. I guess yeah, Yeah, I guess
this is what I was referring to. Hear, because it
sounds like the spider Lord Veris from Game of Thrones,
Old Baldy. He is graceful, he is intuitive, and he
is wise, but he's not necessarily so full of scruples. Well,

(15:21):
the next one is horse my sign. And this one's
uh characterized by being energetic, spirited, optimistic, independent, but prone
to impatience and unfinished tasks. Does that sound like you
to you? Well, as we'll get into later. Just about
any of these, you can see yourself in them if
you want to. That's a good point. Yeah, we'll get
into that. So I do see a bit of myself

(15:41):
in that. Um And in terms of fictional characters, makes
me think of Clive Owens, Dr John Thackeray on the Nick,
who is, you know, very energetic and spirited, but does
not have the patients for rigorous scientific investigation. And we'll
also just completely abandon a task if it's not really
working out. You gotta be you gotta be cautious about

(16:03):
those people who have an emphasis on getting things done.
You know. I haven't seen the Nick, but I've heard
it's very good. Oh, I love it. I I highly
recommend it. Um. You know, for individuals who weren't too
squeamish about a turn of the century surgery scene. Okay,
how about how about the next one? Goat? Oh yeah,
they say the goat is loving, gentle, and creative, but

(16:24):
maybe shy and reluctant to directness and set in their ways. Well,
this one I thought was kind of difficult because that's
not really that this type of central character you tend
to encounter in a story. But it did make me
think of Donnie from The Big Lebowski. Yeah, Donnie who
loves surfing. He was sweet, yeah, loving and creative. Al right.

(16:45):
Next we have the monkey, when again we're about to
enter into monkey. Uh smart, happy, curious, energetic, but prone
to over confidence and all the pitfalls that come with
over confidence. So the one that came to my mind
based on this is Tony Stark from Iron And So
this is a guy who who likes to have a
good time. He's curious, he's full of energy, he's very smart,

(17:06):
but he's kind of full of himself. Yeah. I think
that's a good a good fit, all right. Next up
we have a rooster. Rooster is punctual, reliable, independent, but
maybe a bit conceded. This one was a hard one
for me to really think about in terms of modern fiction.
But yeah, again, how many characters can you think of
that are known for punctuality, yeah, and being vain without

(17:28):
being just like movie vain or Dorian gray vein. The
one that came to mind, though, is Christoph Waltz character Dr.
King Schultz in Django and Chain, because he's a plant,
great planner, he's loyal, but he's ultimately brought down by
his own form of vanity, moral of a you know,
a cultural intellectual vanity, the physical vanity. He can't walk away.

(17:49):
He's got to make his point. He's got to make
his point, even if it's the most it's the most
disastrous choice in the movie. Okay, so we got two left.
One of them is the dog. And what do they
say about the dog? The dog is gregarious, honest, fun, loyal,
prone to worrying, you know, whimpering in the corner. That's
an interesting combination of things. Two people came to mind
for me. One of them is another Big Lebowski character,

(18:11):
would be the dude from The Big Oldowski. So he's gregarious, honest, fun, loyal,
he's all those things, but he also worries a lot.
He's worried that they're gonna cut off various parts of
his body. Another one that came to my mind is say,
have you seen Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt? Serious Kimmy Schmidt. She's
a dog here, I think, I mean she's a in
the Chinese Zodia accents. Very much gregarious, honest, loyal, fun

(18:33):
and prone to worrying. Another one that maybe came to
my mind is grom It from Wallace and Grommet, but
that he's kind of disqualified because he's actually a dog,
all right. And then finally last place, Pig. Pig is noble, strong,
fiercely loyal to family and friends, though they can be
difficult at times and can be a bit reckless. This
is this is another one. I got a credit to

(18:55):
my wife Rachel. I was talking to her about this
last night and she was like, Mrs Vorhees from Freddie
but a strong mother, right yeah? Um? Well. Another mother
that comes to mind from Game of Thrones Cercy Lanister, who,
for all her faults, and she has many, she's very
loyal to her children specifically, and pretty much only to

(19:16):
her children. You know, it's all about protecting her children,
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(19:38):
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(20:00):
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(20:22):
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dreaming off. Okay, so that has been the basic crash

(20:48):
course on the very popularly broadly accessible version of the
Chinese zodiac. But now we want to get more into
the specifics about the scientificly measurable effects of belief in
the Chinese zodiac, what people think about it, how it
influences culture, and what economic and sociological influences it might have.

(21:09):
And I know what a lot of you are thinking
too at this point. It is one thing to think
about as seasonal zodiac having as an effect, right, you
know this and it was born in winter, this one
in summer, etcetera. But you know, how could everybody in
a single year have the same basic personality type. It
just it's unbelievable. It's just ridiculous. Really, Like, everybody born
in the year of the Dragon is not going to
be this massive go getter leader person. Uh, everybody born

(21:33):
in the year of the Rat is not going to
be unscrewed. It's it's not gonna be this unscrupulous individual. Um.
So how does it work? How does it end up,
you know, playing into our perceptions of self, uh, perceptions
of what our offspring should be. And and you know,
even how we should hire people. Yes, and now we're
going to turn our attention to the dragon child, the
children born in the year of the Dragon. Why is

(21:56):
the year of the dragon considered special in the Chinese zodiac? Ah, well,
this this is a great question. And uh, and I
promise I'm not going to spend an excessive amount of
time here. We're gonna maybe do an episode on dragons
later on. Um. But but just to be brief about it.
You know, the Western dragon is this earthy, wormy, off

(22:16):
and downright infernal creature. The Eastern dragon is the celestial creature.
So there's a big difference here because in in Western
mythology of the dragon is very often a monster, right,
It's a thing that must be fought or defeated. It's
a thing that causes havoc. It's it's a threat, and
it often is not very sometimes even not very sentient.

(22:37):
I mean, it depends on which mythology you're going with.
But yeah, it's a big monstrous thing that's gross and
you don't want it around, right. Yeah, it's coiling up
out of the ground, whereas the celestial dragon of the East,
the Chinese dragon, it's coming out of the sky. It's
controlling the weather, it's controlling the flow of the rivers,
it's controlling the ocean. It's all about potency and strength.

(22:57):
It's a divine creature. It's sometimes a bearer of gods
and demi gods, but often the dragon itself is viewed
as a god or demi god in terms of its power.
It's not only an important creature among the Han people,
the primary ethnic group in the in China, but also
for the other fifty six ethnic groups. The dragon is

(23:18):
is old and just and pre dates the other religions
and philosophies that flowed into China, such as Taoism, Buddhism,
um Islam, etcetera. So it sounds like the the listeners
who are familiar with the Western dragon just we're all
going to have this stumbling block in our understanding of

(23:40):
the significance of the dragon in Chinese culture. Yeah, yeah,
because you know so often that the dragon plays into
creation myths. One in particular that I like the Miao
people of southwest China, believe that the divine dragon lived
in a cave and a bunch of monkeys came to
the cave, and the dragon breathed on the monkeys and
turn them into humans. That also sounds like a perfectly

(24:04):
adaptable creation myth of humanity. If if you're a person
who wants to fuse a traditional creation myth with modern
evolutionary theory. Yeah, indeed, I mean it sounds like you.
I mean, I'm instantly imagining a dragon showing up in
two thousand and one of Space Odyssey. Um. Yeah. And
I should also point out that occasionally you do have
an evil dragon or a very destructive dragon, but for

(24:27):
the for the most part, even if they're destructive, it
has more to do with their tie to like primal
forces of nature any thing. Um. Another thing to keep
in mind about the dragon is that they're basically two
different ways to look at what their composition is. But
you have to think we we have such a clear
idea in our mind of what a dragon is, even
an Eastern dragon. It's a huge lizard with wings that

(24:48):
breathes fire. Yeah, And and it's very ornate, and we
tend not to think about, you know, what is this
composed of? But according to an excellent book, A Handbook
of Chinese Mythology by um uh Lee Yang ming On
and Jessica Anderson Turner, um either two ways to look
at one. One is that a dragon is basically crocodile, tornado,

(25:09):
lightning river, all sort of put together. But you can
also see the dragon as a composite of various fanciful
images of other important creatures, creatures that were important to
various tribes in ancient China that were then integrated. UM
so that you know, there's several different types of Chinese
dragon as the myths rollout over the centuries, but you'll

(25:31):
see interesting descriptions of their composed composite parts. Head of
a horse, tail of a snake, ears of a deer,
horns of an ox, rabbit's eyes, clams, abdomen, A second
clams abdomen I mean the abdomen of a clam, or
an abdomen just covered in clamshells. I don't know. I
like both the interpretations of fish scales, tiger pause, eagle talents.

(25:54):
So it's interesting to think to me, I can't help
but think, well, to what extent is not only the
dragon the only mythological creature on the zodiac, he is
also composed of elements from various other animals. It's the
best of all possible world. It's like like an animal voltron.
So yeah, the dragon is big business. Um. People of

(26:15):
China often think of themselves as the children of the dragon.
The five claud dragon was an exclusive symbol of later dynasties,
the Chang dynasty from nineteen eleven. The flag featured a
coiled dragon against a yellow background. So the dragon is
just inherently tied with Chinese culture. Okay, so you can
definitely see why the dragon carries a lot of mythological

(26:38):
and cultural significance. But what is its specifically supposed to
mean for a child born in the year of a dragon?
Because all of the animals we described in that long
list of the zodiac, they all had admirable characteristics, and
the dragon just seemed like another one of them with
some kind of general, vague admirable characteristics listed. So, so

(26:58):
what what makes a dragon special? I mean, basically, I mean,
you can list off a bunch of adjectives like honest,
courage is powerful, sensitive, But basically they're a go getter.
Like they are, they're the They're the kid that you want,
you want your child to be this dragon that is
fierce enough to uh to win it life, but also
you know, humble and important enough to not get you know,

(27:21):
to not fall into the rats, the situation of sort
of cheating to get to the head of the line. Yeah,
so it is primarily it is an animal that is
powerful and can get things done and will move to
the head of the pack, but is also concerned with duty, right,
with with helping others and with doing what it needs
to do. You said, it stopped to make the rain,

(27:42):
and that's why I didn't win. It just wasn't all
that bothered about winning. According to to Chinese strology, the
dragon that's who you want leading your company, right, leading
your nation, not one of those tigers. Yeah, because the
tigers another one that you could maybe think of as
a go getter. Remember that they're they're courageous, they're powerful,
they can get things done, but there is also their

(28:02):
negative characteristics associated with the tiger, And in some Chinese cultures,
it seems like, especially in like Singapore and Taiwan, and
maybe Hong Kong that the tiger is considered an undesirable
birth sign, or at least it has been in the past.
There was a two thousand eleven article by Yen's Kastner
in The Asia Times called Tiger Throttling Taiwan's birth Room,

(28:26):
and it it says that it lists some years of
the tiger. It says, whoever is born in nineteen fifty,
nineteen sixty two, nineteen seventy four, nineteen eighty six, my
birth year or nineteen tends to question authority and is
therefore likely to cause trouble for himself, his family, or
his employers at some stage in life. Yeah. I think
this was also the article that pointed out that some

(28:49):
firms would actually hire a fortune teller to go through, um,
the applications that were coming in, to go through the
resumes and look at the birth years. Yeah. Oh man, Yeah,
because in order to prevent tigers from coming in and
wrecking your office place. You know. Another thing that's interesting
is that the tiger is different than all of the
other animals in the zodiac in one important respect. Right.

(29:11):
Oh yeah, it's the the only real meat eater, I mean,
the the only real man eater rather on the list. Yeah,
I mean maybe you could in some wild circumstances, maybe
a pig or a dog or something could attack a person,
but the tiger is the only one that's a definite
human predator. Yeah, it's a definite real world threat. Don't
get carried away by the way that. I don't think

(29:33):
that means you should go hunt tigers. Most of the time,
they don't attack people. But we're saying potentially could. Yeah,
and and again back to your point, it's not something
you see just across the board, but certain areas are
going to have more the stigma about the tiger than others,
in the same way that you'll go to other nations,
other nationalities and find the tiger as more of a
noble creature. Uh So, it just varies depending on where

(29:56):
you are. Okay, So, but back to dragons. There's a
general idea that wagons are successful and have good lives.
There's good fate for a dragon. They're gonna get good grades,
they're gonna find success in life, they're gonna bring honor
to the family there. They're just gonna be good ones
to have in your family. Are there any famous dragons
you can list. Uh, you know, born in the year

(30:16):
of the dragon, so we can see what a dragon
looks like. Oh yeah, and uh and again it's easy
to put together a list like this, right because out
of any given year, they're gonna be some exemplary examples
of of accomplishment and fame. So yeah, Bruce Lee, you
got actress Maggie Chung. You've got former Chinese Piramount leader
Dom Shaoping. You gotta Liam Neeson, John Lennon, Salvador Dolly,

(30:39):
Sigmund Freud, Plee, Giermo del Toro, Stephen Colbert, Sarah Palin
Bennetet Cumberbatch, Sasha Gray, Connor McGregor, Vladimir Putin, the Macho
Man Randy Savage, Brandy Savage, Mr T. Paul Rubens, Chuck Norris,
Frank Zappa, Waynes Eyre, John Gotti, Fred Savage, Saga Era,

(31:00):
Stanley Kubrick, and Philip k. Dick, Richard Pryor, and Rashida Jones,
just to name a few. The only one I needed
to hear was Macho Man Randy Savage. Now I understand
the dragon fate leads to a slim jim ad deal.
Now you've probably noticed we did have some some some
Chinese names on there, but most of those were Western examples, uh,

(31:24):
you know, and part of that is that we're more
versed in Western pop culture here than we are in
Chinese culture. But the other thing is when you start
trying to pick out examples of Chinese dragons, yes, you'll
find some some good examples. But I actually was looking around.
I've poken around on the the top ten entries on

(31:44):
the Forbes China Celebrity one hundred uh, and I was
looking at everything between two thousand and four and two
thousand fifteen. Again, the top ten uh famous you know,
important people, um, A lot of them in entertainment, but
some in business. And the only top tenor that I
found between two thousand and four and two thousand and
fifteen that was a dragon was Chinese director Chin Kegi,

(32:09):
who directed the claim film Farewell My Concubine. Huh. Now
this basically all means nothing, but but I think it
is important to look at, you know, as we try
to figure out does does being born in the dragon?
Does being a dragon actually have any tangible benefit on
your life? You know, certainly not do to any kind
of magical astrological reason, but due to just the importance

(32:32):
that is projected on you. Well, obviously some parents seem
to think so, because it turns out to be a
fact that the Dragon year has been a boom year
for baby births in many Chinese cultures. Right yeah, and
this is where we really get into, you know, analyzing
the tangible power of the thing. To what extent does

(32:55):
does the desire to have a dragon as your offspring,
to birth a dragon? To to what extent does that
actually influence the birth rate of a given population? That is,
you know, under the power of the superstitious thinking. Now
you linked me to a really interesting piece on this
by a writer named Rosie Seema, Right yeah, this is

(33:16):
a priceonomics piece and uh two Goman fifteen piece, and
she does a really good job just rolling through some
of the statistic statistics here. It was called how the
Chinese Zodiac effects National birth Rates? Yes, and another paper
that found particularly helpful was paper called creating New Traditions
in Modern Chinese Populations Aiming for Birth in the Year
of the Dragon by Daniel Iam Goodkind and that was

(33:38):
published in Population and Developmental Review. Okay, so what's the deal,
what what are the what are the stats on birthrates
and dragon years tell us basically, and we're gonna we're
gonna break this down a bit, but basically, you do
see spikes in particular areas that line up with the
year of the dragon, right, So this is supposed to
I think what we were mainly looking at was measuring

(34:00):
fertility rates among ethnic Chinese in Taiwan, Hong Kong, uh
Singapore and other places, right yeah, uh, Peninsular Malaysia and
in other parts of Asia. And that we also looked
at data for mainland China, for the People's Republic of
China as well. Okay, so let's look at one. Let's
look at one non dragon year to dragon year transition

(34:22):
and what what does it look like? Okay? Well, one
of the big ones here, one of the most impressive
areas in the stats. In seventy six and eighty eight,
fertility rates among Chinese and Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Peninsular
Malaysia and other parts of Asia surge. And in eight
particularly the rabbit to dragon increase in Singapore and Peninsular

(34:44):
Malaysia was a whopping twenty four to twenty six percent.
So it went up by twenty four correct, that's unbelievable. Yeah,
to put this in perspective, the only other times we
see surges of this magnitude in the birth rate, it
involves something really major happening. For instance, nineteen sixty six,
the prohibition of abortion in Romania caused a substantial spike

(35:07):
like this. I guess I could imagine maybe at the
conclusion of a civil war, some of their huge human
disaster that was preventing births. Yes, I mean a particular
example of that also comes from China in nineteen sixty two,
as everybody's recovering from the famine of the Great Leap Forward.
So some other examples. In two thousand, Hong Kong saw

(35:28):
more than a five percent rise in the number of
births according to official data. That just to be clear,
that's another dragon year. And when questioned about this in
various polls, um the parents, there are parents who are saying, yes,
I we were trying to aim for that dragon here.
In two thousand and eleven two thousand and twelve, during
a BBC poll, prospective parents in Hong Kong, Taiwan and

(35:49):
Singapore all admitted to consciously timing their pregnancy for a
Dragon year. Uh. In that same year, By the way,
China was anticipating a five percent birth rate increase. That's
mainland know itself. They didn't quite hit that as well,
discussed in a bit, but there was a there was
a boost. Now, I expect this would be interesting to
see in contrast to what I bet you'd find in

(36:11):
especially some of these areas, which would be a generally
downward trending birth rate, right yeah, I mean, certainly matching
up with some of these signs that are viewed as
less desirable, such as the tiger As we've already mentioned,
in two thousand ten a Taiwan's fertility rate was already
trending downward, but then you're the tiger hits and the
drop made it plumb at two point eight nine five,

(36:33):
one of the lowest in the world. Uh yeah, and
then the dread Then two thousand twelve Dragon year two
years later, it brought the fertility right back up to
one point to seven, higher than it had been in
almost a decade. That's interesting because the tiger and Dragon
years come pretty close together, right yeah. Yeah, it's tiger,
rabbit and then dragons. So you know, if you're if

(36:54):
you're skipping Tiger year, you could aim for rabbit or
I guess you can just hold on and then try
and calibrate your reproductive schedule, so you hit dragon instead
of rabbit, man to be that rabbit caught between the
tiger and the dragon. It's worth noting that this population,
these population trends have an impact on a number of factors,
from just an individual dragons school experience at college aspirations,

(37:15):
to the effects on institutions and services. I mean, imagine
a hospital or school rolling with the lull and boom
of tiger and dragon years. Oh yeah. Or imagine if
there's a huge surge in in the number of children
during a dragon year, imagine the year all of those
children start leaving school and entering the workforce, right, I mean,
there's gonna be a suddenly way more supply of of

(37:36):
adult workers than there was than the market was prepared
to absorb. Right now, at this point, you're probably saying,
I think, and you said, well, hey, Robert and Joe, uh,
Chinese zodiac has been along been around for thousands and
thousands of years, so surely the dragon surge has been
in effect for thousands and thousands of years. I don't
think there's any evidence of that is there no the

(37:57):
evidence uh, seems to suggest that the opposite, that the
dragon effect on birth rates has only been in effect
since the nineteen seventies. Now why would that be surely? Now,
what I would not suspect is that more people started
believing in astrology in the nineteen seventies, right and and

(38:17):
certainly it would it seems like it was. It's the opposite.
I mean, there are certainly still gonna be individuals who
heavily believe in it, and it still has just a
lot of cultural power over people and just symbolic power.
But you know, as modernization takes hold, and especially in
communist China, there is for a while a tendency to
move away from old beliefs and uh and and certainly superstition. Uh.

(38:40):
Though we will definitely talk in a little bit about
exactly to what extent true belief in in the power
of the zodiac really figures into this, Like how deeply
do you have to believe in it to time for
a dragon birth? Right now? You know, one of the
big factors, obviously is that you see birth control becoming
more of a of an option right in becomes widely

(39:03):
available in the affected areas, so family planning becomes more
of a reality, planning around finances and ambitions, but also
the ability to plan around the astrological calendar. Oh, that
makes sense. So that is an argument that is generally
made um for you know, for why we see this
modern boom. Yeah. And there's a parallel that goes along
with this. In this often cited paper on this subject

(39:24):
called the Influence of the Chinese Zodiac on Fertility in
Hong Kong s A r. By Paul SF, Joseph Lee,
and Y. B. Chung. Right, Yeah, they point out that
prior to the nineteen seventies, you know, there was just
no there was no family planning at all. Really, you
just had kids for as long as you could. You
just grew the family as large as you could, and
that was that was life. You might you'll have a

(39:47):
dragon in the family, maybe you'll have a tiger, you'll
have a horse. But that's just how things rolled out.
But then, of course, the the age of contraception, because
to change that, uh, certainly, Um, you reach the point
in the late nineteen seven days where the People's Republic
of China rolls out the one child policy, and uh,
this it's believed might have had an effect on zodiological

(40:11):
birth timing as well. Now that brings us to another
interesting question, which is the mainland China itself, People's Republic
of China. We've been talking about places like Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan,
but there seems to be some disagreement, or at least
some ambiguity in the numbers about to what extent this

(40:33):
phenomenon has presented itself in in China, right, Yeah, because
you you just don't see those same spikes in in
the data for mainland China, at least until two thousand,
if not two thousand twelve. Now, I have to admit
that I was a little I was a little confused
by the numbers here because I was seeing some conflicting

(40:54):
reports about whether this, uh, this dragon birth surge does
show up in China or not for the past couple
of cycles. Yeah, because on one hand, I saw staff
that said China's crude birth rate was six point eight
percent higher in two thousand, But then some other data,
particularly some data in that Prisonomics paper, seemed to show

(41:17):
it as being rather flat for two thousand. But when
you when you do look at the statistics from two
thousand eleven two thousand twelve to thirteen. According to the website,
statistic of the number of Chinese births went from sixteen
point oh four million in two thousand eleven to sixteen
point thirty five million in two thousand and twelve. So

(41:38):
there was a one point nine percent bump uh in
the birth rate then, uh. But then in the years
to follow you see sixteen point four million births in
two thousand thirteen, sixteen point eighty seven million in two
thousand fourteen. So the growth continues regardless of the sign.
Now there are different you know, the different ways. So

(41:58):
to look at that, uh, I've seen it argue that
that essentially the population is just so vast in mainland
China that any any boost that's taking place in various regions,
it's just going to be lost in the just just
in the weight of the of the population data. Right.
So there might be some parts of the culture where

(42:19):
the dragon births do prevail, but it's just become such
a small blip on the radar of Chinese population dynamics
that it doesn't really show up as a very strong trend. Yes,
to see the strong trend, you have to look to Taiwan, Singapore,
those other examples. Okay, now this brings us back to
the question of why right, Why is why is it
a modern setting? Why is this this ancient superstitious manner

(42:42):
of thinking. Why is this suddenly exerting more control in
some areas of Chinese culture? Well, a few things to
keep in mind here. First of all, this first point
comes to us from paper creating new traditions in modern
Chinese populations aiming for birth in the year of the
Drag and this is that good article. Uh points out

(43:02):
that Chinese astrology traditionally places more emphasis on the day
and hour of the birth rather than the year. So
because if you break down the traditional Chinese day, it's
composed of twelve hours, one for each animal that we've
already mentioned. Um So, therefore the roots here seem to
be perhaps less the two thousand plus yer tradition of

(43:25):
Chinese astrology, and rather it's more a matter of a
cloud of loose modern folk beliefs. That's interesting. Yeah, So
it's not so much that people are are deeply superstitious
or deeply involved in you know, ancient Chinese magical beliefs,
but there's more just kind of like it's the place
Matt Zodiac. It's the most easily accessible and broadly available

(43:50):
impressions of the of the Chinese zodiac that filter through
into having large effects on culture. Yeah. Yeah, it's except
it's not only on your menu. It's in your house,
it's in the park, it's part of it's just the
shadow of it is just unavoidable. So as you find
yourself in a modern setting where you're you get to
be choosier about everything regarding your family. You get to

(44:11):
be choosier about how many children you have, regardless if
you live under the one child policy or not. You
have all these choices. You can make choices based on,
you know, what the kid's gonna wear, when the kid's
gonna be born, what kind of school schooling is going
to be involved there, And so the superstition ends up
weighing into that choice. Right. Another factor to keep in

(44:33):
mind here, and this is brought up by by Goodkin
in his article, is that you know, we we we
make arguments about modern contraception in their role. That was
one explanation offer for why this didn't show up until
the seventies. Yeah, because suddenly people can choose when they're
gonna have kids, but is he argues, ancient texts indicated
there there were various methods on the table to adjust

(44:55):
sexual behavior and aim for the dragon birth. If that's
what a couple wanted, You mean you had in fantaside,
you had, you know, a board of agency you could
get from a Chinese apothecary. But a particular note for
good can was Dallas practices of semen retention. And this Uh,
I don't want to go down to a rabbit hole

(45:16):
here too much, but basically this gets into u yin
and yang and male and feminine energy, and this Dallas
idea that if you could control your ejaculation and ejaculate
less semen during intercourse, then you could better retain your
yang energy and possibly even absorb a little bit of

(45:38):
your partners a yen energy. You wrote about this in
UH You got a post about the fox spirit, didn't you. Yeah, yeah,
it plays into that a little bit because the fox
spirit is a feminine creature that can drain you of
your vital yang essence. Basically, the main idea here is
that there were were various pseudo uh alchemical sexual practices
to control ejaculation and granted the emphasis here wasn't on contraception.

(46:03):
It was more on in this magical belief system of
Vien and yang Uh. But the change the Chinese knew
how reproduction worked, they knew how where babies came from.
So you're saying, like, even a long time ago before
modern birth control, if they were really concerned about timing
for dragon births, they could have done it. Yeah, if
there was a real tangible cultural emphasis put on aiming

(46:26):
for that dragon birth, they could have done it if
they wanted to. Now, you can also argues that the
snake year, which comes immediately after the dragon, may also
have a role here, because that could be viewed by
some as a bad birth year, thus affecting the the
phenomenon right, making people want to get in there early,
kind of double it up right, right, like if you're
gonna have a kid, it's beneficial to have a dragon,

(46:48):
and then right after that as a snake, which some
people might not want. Better, better to hit the dragon
before the snake or hit horse afterwards. Unless here in
South Korea, which also uses a form of the zodiac um,
where horse mails are apparently favorite and horse females are not,
and the gender ratio of births in horse years excuse mail, huh?

(47:10):
And the reason here is, on one hand, you know,
abortion may play a role the the aborting of female offspring,
but also misreporting a birth date in order to hit
a more desirable zodiac year. So if you're on the fence,
so your kids on the fence of possibly being a horse,
and you don't want her to have that kind of association,
then you could just say, oh, she's not a horse.

(47:32):
I'm sorry, she's a snake. Okay, So now I think
it's time to turn our attention to the fate of
dragon children. It is a dragon child really more likely
to succeed in the world than children born under other signs? Yeah?
Is the is the the magical thinking involved here? Is
that giving them? Uh? Is that projecting some sort of

(47:52):
importance on them? Is it giving them a boost? Is
it putting too much pressure on them? Um? Yeah? Are
they gonna have opportunities that their individuals are not going
to have just because of their birth here? Yeah? Well
there was a two thousand two Forbes article titled is
Success in the Stars? By Virginia Citronto, and that compared
birth here on Forbes' list of the four hundred wealthiest

(48:15):
Americans at the time. That's interesting. Remember the Americans and
what did they find, well, son of a Gun. Even
in this list of Americans, the dragons came out on
top forty three of the Forbes four hundred or ten
point seven five percent were born in dragon years, which
was more than any other Chinese zodiac sign, which is weird.

(48:36):
I mean, so maybe there is something to this superstition.
But then again, this is this is Americans. I mean,
a lot of these people probably are not even aware
of what Chinese zodiac sign they are, or if anything,
they probably have just that Chinese menu association that we
mentioned earlier exactly. But then there was a there was
a paper in Economic Inquiry called do Dragons Have Better Faith?

(48:57):
This came out in two thousand five by Cafu Wong
and Linda Young and Wong and Young investigate weather dragons
actually have better outcomes in life by looking at data
sets from the nineteen one in nineteen ninety six Hong
Kong census, and the authors explained that the Hong Kong
Census data was used because one most of the community

(49:19):
in Hong Kong is Chinese to the lunar calendar, is
used extensively. And three, this census model provides data on
other useful variables like level of education and so Wong
and Young founded in the nineteen nine one census, Dragons
actually did have a slightly higher than average mean earnings variable.
So they're comparing year of birth to how much money

(49:41):
you make. It was a plus four point eight five
percent on earnings. But in nineteen ninety six dragons had
a slightly lower than average mean earning report, with a
negative zero point twenty two percent. However, they said that
when mitigating variables like schooling are taken to account, they
conclude that the that quote, statistically, the coefficients are unstable

(50:05):
across sensus years and insignificantly different from zero in most cases.
So ultimately they don't find any strong evidence for the
superstition that dragons do better. So an effect on birthrates
in some places, yes, an effect on the actual success
level of individuals born in that year, no evidence at all.

(50:26):
Well there, you know, as we said, in one of
the years, there was a slight advantage. In another year
there there wasn't. And they said, overall, when you compare
it to years of schooling and stuff like that, a
strong trend does not emerge. But there could be other
reasons that that a dragon birth could seem to have
an effect that you could look at the people around

(50:46):
you in society or look at yourself and say, hey, yeah, man,
those dragons are really great. I want to have a
dragon child too. And it wouldn't necessarily have to be
economically measurable. It could be entirely based on, you know,
the sort of human capital or just just social perception.

(51:06):
And here I want to bring in something that we've
talked about in a previous episode, which is the role
of the forror effect also known as the Barnum effect.
Will use those interchangeably for and Barnum in astrology. So
if you if you missed our episode Something for Everybody,
the Horror Effect from July, let's do a brief refresher

(51:27):
on it. What what was the horror effect? All right,
So what we're talking about here is the Tennessee of
people to accept vague general personality of descriptions is highly
accurate and applying to them specifically. Yeah, this is why
these personality tests are so popular. Yeah, Like, like any
of those descriptions we made earlier, we say, oh, here
the pros and the cons of year of the rat.

(51:48):
And if you're you're the rat, you instantly cling under
the things that seem to fit, that you know are true,
the things you like would like to be true. And
if and if something doesn't quite stick, you just let
it fall away. Yeah, and it helps them or general
the description is, so, there are a few things we
found in that episode, Uh, what were especially conducive to
people judging personality descriptions, especially vague general ones as applying

(52:11):
specifically to them. One is that if it's supposedly tailored
to them by a competent authority, and in some cases
a competent authority may include something like tradition. You know,
zodiacal tradition could be considered a competent authority, or especially
if it's flattering or favorable to the dupe in question,
you or me. Uh, you're more likely to accept descriptions

(52:34):
of yourself that sound kind of good. Now. There was
a study on the Barnum effect or the horror effect
and popular horoscopes in the Journal of Psychology in nineteen
eighty three by Katherine S. Fichton and Betty Sunterton. This
is an older paper, but I think it's it's interesting
and it applies to what we're talking about here. It's

(52:54):
also going to be dealing with Western astrology, not Chinese astrology,
but I think the same principles can apply in interesting ways.
So this was carried out in nineteen eight three, and
what they addressed was the perceived accuracy of astrological personality descriptions.
So an interesting starting question is this some sometimes, even nonbelievers,

(53:15):
people who are not into astrology, they don't give it
any credence, will read an astrology based description of their
signs supposed personality traits and report finding this description highly accurate.
So you are a Scorpio and I tell you what
a scorpio's personality is supposed to be like, and you're like, well,
but that's me. Yeah. How could How could they know

(53:38):
so much? So they got three hundred and sixty six
college students and they examined a individual differences associated with
horoscope reading habits, be the reliability and validity of daily
and monthly horoscope forecasts and astrologically based personality descriptions, and
see the effects of knowing the zodiac sign on the

(53:59):
perception of usefulness of horoscope forecasts and on the accuracy
of astrologically based personality descriptions. So we're mainly interested in
the second half of B and then c there how
accurate these personality descriptions are and whether it matters that
you know zodiac signs. Uh. So they did. They broke
it up like this. There were two hundred and three

(54:21):
subjects that rated thirteen one paragraph personality descriptions on a
ten point scale from not at all like me to
very much like me. So it might say, you know,
you're very brave, powerful, courageous, and strong, you love lobster
butter and jet packs. Uh and and you would say, yeah,
that sounds a lot like me, or no, that does

(54:42):
not sound very much like me. And so twelve of
these descriptions came from a couple of different purse size
horoscope booklets, and the thirteen was a control paragraph that
was known as a Barnum paragraph, or what it was
was playing on the Barnum horror effect. It was personality
description specifically designed to appear highly accurate by exploiting this

(55:06):
horror effect. Contained vague statements that have a very high
base rate of occurrence in the population. It was supposed
to be the kind of thing that anybody would look
at and say, yeah, that's me. Some of the subjects
got to see the paragraphs identified with the appropriate zodiac
signs so that it would say like cancer and then
described the described the personality. Others just saw the paragraphs

(55:30):
without the zodiac signs associated with them, and and no
indication of the astrological significance. Uh. And one of the
things before I report the results is that it's it's
important to emphasize that this was studying self perceived validity,
not externally verified validity. So it's what people's idea is
of how well it describes them, not how well it

(55:51):
actually matches any external behavior. Okay, and interesting to hear
that on one hand we have the description and in
another hand, we have a description with the symbolic power
of the zodiac. Yeah, yeah, exactly. In a separate part
of the paper, one that we're not really focusing on,
that they found that the daily and monthly forecasts were unreliable.
You know, so when it tells you, like, hey, what

(56:12):
you know, what you're gonna need to do today as
a cancer is not choked to death on a hot
dog and makeing make an investment with somebody who offers
you an opportunity those kinds of things. They match those
two previous days, and and it turned out that these
had no effect whatsoever. They were not any more reliable
for the one zone zodiac sign than for the other one.

(56:33):
They was so specific that they just didn't hold up. Yeah,
that these were the forecasts for events. But the personality descriptions,
on the other hand, were in some cases found to
have some significant reliability. And this is the weird thing,
they say, quote an average of four point twelve of
the twelve personality descriptions were matched correctly by the seventeen subjects.

(56:56):
The probability of such results being due to chance is
less than five per cent, so that's kind of weird.
So when no identification of personality descriptions with zodiac signs
was supplied the subjects, first of all, they clearly liked
the barnum paragraph the best, The one they thought that
most accurately described them. Was not a zodiac paragraph at all.

(57:17):
It was just this barnum paragraph that's supposed to match anybody.
But when the subjects knew the zodiac signs associated with
the descriptions, they tended to think that their own signs
description was more accurate than that of the eleven other signs,
But there was an unexpected finding with one of the
two astrology books, the Purse Book be the second one.

(57:40):
Even when the descriptions didn't have the zodiac sign matched
with them, people found their own people's You know, so
I'm a cancer and I'm reading through these unlabeled personality descriptions.
I was more likely in the study to pick the
description lick linked with the cancer sign, even when it
didn't say cancer. Wow, and that is weird. That makes

(58:04):
me wonder, Wait a minute, is there something to astrology? Well, no,
the Purse Book B was not full of real magic.
Subsequent analysis of the data showed that when someone who
had at some time in the past read a description
of their own science personality, they tended to rate their
own science descriptions is more accurate even when it wasn't

(58:27):
identified by the sign. Thus, the culprit could simply be
conscious or unconscious familiarity with what the sign is supposed
to be like. So even the shadow of that of
that set of that symbol of that sign. Yeah, and
these people didn't have to be deep into astrology. It
could be somebody like me who I don't pay attention
to astrology. I don't. I don't really know anything about it.

(58:48):
But I have read the cancer description sometime in the past,
and if I answered that way on the questionnaire, it
turned out I could look at unlabeled descriptions of personality
at ease and pick the one for cancer as most
likely applying to me. And I just want to read
a quote from their conclusion. They say, two possible mechanisms

(59:11):
underlying the effect of familiarity on acceptance of personality descriptions
can be proposed. Uh. First of all, having read that
as a Virgo you are an honest person, one self
assessment may come to include the trait honest, so in
that way that the personality description, once you've read it,
actually influences how you think of yourself. Uh. Back to them,

(59:32):
A personality description which stresses honesty may therefore be accepted
as an accurate characteristic of oneself. Alternately, having some previous
information about one's supposed character traits e g. I'm a Virgo,
Virgos are honest may give one the opportunity to notice
and subsequently recall instances of behavioral confirmation. I returned the

(59:55):
bus ticket to the man who dropped it that was
really honest of me. That's the miliarity may operate in
this instance through having repeatedly noticed oneself behaving in an
honest fashion. So they're The second idea there is that
if you've read a description of your personality before, you
have primed your brain to cherry pick from then on

(01:00:17):
instances of things that match with what you've read in
the past. And this I feel like this makes particular sense, uh,
when thinking about the Chinese zodiac, because you're talking about
how these different zodiac signs and symbols and how they
end up casting the shadow in our life and you
just can't avoid it just subconsciously thinking about it. I

(01:00:38):
feel like the Chinese zodiac signs are even easier to
just casually fall into because they have the animal at
the center. They have that personality that so even you
look at the pig, you have enough of familiarity with
stories of pigs and reality of pigs you have some
idea what that personality consists of. Yeah, totally. The animal
character brings a level of personnality to the characterization that

(01:01:02):
I think is just not present in many of the
Western zodiac signs. Yeah, I mean especially if you're stuck
with Pisces with the scales or whatnot. Right, Yeah, I
always wanted a Scorpion. I'm some scales. Wouldn't it be
great if it were more directly tailored to exactly what
the things were? So it's like, oh, I'm a Pisces.
When somebody puts something on one half of me, I

(01:01:23):
tip over to that side. I'm a cancer and I
can't help pinching people when I'm in public, right exactly,
I'm a Scorpio, and some when somebody cuts my tail off,
I don't immediately die. I just can't poop until I die. Yeah,
I did that. That would be that would of course
be way too specific in generality. That's where the power
is when it comes to a zodiac. You know. Another

(01:01:45):
thing that's interesting about how this applies to society at
large is the way at which I wonder if something
like this could become a self fulfilling prophecy across generations,
because think about it like this, This is just sculation.
This is not based on a finding um. But we
do know that the Barnum effect or the horror effect,

(01:02:07):
through that people tend to grant more credence to the
accuracy of vague personality descriptions when they're worded in a
favorable or flattering way. So for this reason, I think
it might be sensible to guess that dragons are more
likely than other people to believe in the virtues of dragons.
When that makes sense, yeah, because the sign like if

(01:02:28):
you're a pig, some people can have some issues with that.
In fact, it's worth remembering that there are Chinese Muslims
and um I understand for for Chinese muslim this can
be kind of rather problematic and end up not referring
to the year of the Pig as the year of
the pig directly because of the pigs status in Islamic culture. Yeah, yeah,

(01:02:50):
so totally. I I can see how ones uh, like
the positive or negative qualities associated with the thing can
affect the extent to which you believe in it. So
if you're a dragon, you might be more likely to
believe in the virtues of dragons. And if selective timing
and reproduction means that there are more dragons than any
other animal of the zodiac over time, especially in I

(01:03:12):
don't mean across all Chinese, but in certain areas where
this is a pronounced trend. This could also mean that
there are more adults of reproductive age every generation that
believe in the superiority of dragons because they themselves are
dragons and thus also aimed to produce dragons. So could
this lead to something like a runaway dragon effect. I'm

(01:03:33):
just imagining like a sci fi story where there's a
culture where something like this has happened over many generations
and it gets to the point where they only breed
a large crop of new children once every twelve years
because of the terrible taboo on children born as non dragons.
I like that sci fi vision there, Joe. Somehow, I
suspect that's probably not going to happen in the real world,

(01:03:56):
because there are just enough other factors controlling when people
give birth, and the fact that, as we've said, it
doesn't seem to be that people are are strongly motivated
by a powerful belief in the Chinese zodiac and and
like that this is the main thing deciding when when
they have a child. But that maybe if it's convenient,

(01:04:18):
it might kind of push you a little bit in
that direction, even just some yeah, some vague loose cultural knowledge,
even just if you don't believe in the magic of it,
but have some positive associations about dragons. It might make
you want to do it. Yeah, the sweet spot here
seems to be um not rigid belief in it, and
also not the complete rejection of it for that place

(01:04:40):
in the middle where it's not really a part of
your daily conscious life, but you cannot escape its cultural
hold on you. Oh. I think that's the way most
of us interact with our cultural superstitions, right. I know
I'm that way that I I don't if you pin
me down, I don't believe in any of these superstitions.
I don't actually believe it's bad luck to cross a

(01:05:02):
black cat's path. I don't actually believe one shouldn't walk
under a ladder, But I know that when there are
no stakes involved, uh, that it might sort of influence
the path I take when I'm walking. Yeah, exactly if
you if it does, all things being equal, which path
are you're gonna take? The one that looks little spooky?
Are the one that that doesn't Even though I don't

(01:05:23):
believe in it, it's just it's just kind of there.
It's a cultural association. And and when I'm not otherwise
motivated by any other strong factor it kind of guides me. Yeah,
And I think that's the remarkable thing about this this
topic that really helps to illuminate the power of myth,
the power of symbolism, and the power of sort of
um background folklore over our lives. Hey, I mean, that's

(01:05:46):
one of our favorite themes here. Now, obviously we'd love
to hear from all of you, Um, what's here zodiac sign?
Do you feel it's accurate? Do you feel like it's
made a marked impact on your life in any way whatsoever?
Uh huh. And we know that we have listeners who
grew up in Chinese households as well. If so, I'd
love for you to share your experience with us on

(01:06:08):
these matters, because obviously the Chinese zodiac is gonna cast
more of a shadow in your life than it did
on our. So one of the things I would love
to hear is if you're a person who knows more
about the Chinese zodiac, who understands some of the complexities
that are no doubt lost on us. I mean, you know,
we we only have the that that place Matt kind
of understanding. I think, yeah, place Matt, And then you know,

(01:06:29):
so some book learning on top of that, but but
that's about it. Yeah, if you if you are somebody
who knows a lot more about the complexities of the
Chinese zodiac and wants to wants to get in touch
with us about that, we we'd love to hear from
you as well, exactly. And hey, in the meantime, head
on over the Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
That's the mothership. That is where you will find all
the podcast episodes, including this one, and we'll make sure

(01:06:50):
that the landing page has some links out to related
material on the site as well as some of the
resources we used in researching it. Also their videos. There
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We are blow the Mind on all of those and
if you want to get in touch with us about
any of those things we brought up just a little

(01:07:10):
while ago, you can email us at blow the Mind
at how Stuff Works, Doctor Well more on this and
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