The Psychological Reasons Why Women Love Reading Horoscopes

Posted by Oranum on July 18th, 2013

Have you ever picked up a newspaper or magazine and within a few seconds found yourself gazing at the horoscopes page? If so, you are not alone. It seems that women are more attracted to their horoscope than men are, and there seems to be some reasoning behind this belief. It seems to lie within the boundary of a woman’s mind. Thinking that they are reading something that is exclusively written just for them is quite captivating, even though most women realise that horoscopes are broadly written for a larger audience, both men and women.

For women, the temptation to gather personal meaning from a description that is written for a majority of people is often referred to by psychologist as the Barnum Effect. This was named after PT Barnum, the man who made famous the quote, “We’ve got something for everyone”. For some psychologists, the reasoning is that women are more prone to attributing a very vague personality trait to themselves, leaving the door open for their emotions to become involved versus logical reasoning.

Of course this doesn’t mean that men don’t enjoy reading their horoscope or that man won’t get as involved with the meanings behind the words. It simply means that horoscope writers tune into our personality traits, both women and men, giving us something we want to believe in: hope.

What horoscopes do for us is entertain us. The actual word ‘horoscope’ is Greek and means ‘to tell the time’. In ancient times, men of power like kings and priests often turned to the stars to help predict whether or not they would be victorious in battle or if they would have a successful harvest that season. Things haven’t really changed much since those times, with the exception that in the late nineteenth century horoscopes began to be written to target average, everyday people. In today’s society, both men and women enjoy reading their horoscope daily.

However, horoscopes are written and geared more towards women than men. They are found in magazines written to be read by women and in grocery store check-out lines where a larger majority of women find themselves shopping versus men. Are women looking for romance more than men? Are they possibly looking for a better social life, love life, or even more money? Probably not, but they still enjoy reading their horoscopes.

About the Author:

This article is written by Ruth Williams, who is also associated with Oranum.com. Oranum.com is first global esoteric webcam portal with free chat and provides free online horoscope for teen, love, pets, career, money, mother and baby and many others. Just choose your zodiac sign and get your horoscope. At Oranum.com you can know everything about horoscope, astrology horoscope, chinese horoscope, virgo horoscope, sagittarius horoscope, scorpio horoscopes, todays horoscope, libra daily horoscope, pisces daily horoscope, aries daily horoscope, capricorn daily horoscope, taurus daily horoscope, gemini daily horoscope, leo daily horoscope, horoscope tarot reading etc.