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Astrology remains embedded in our culture. Not only does it weave itself throughout the great works of literature, including Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Dante, it remains a part of everyday life for many Americans: 1 in 3.57 adults have consulted a horoscope to gain insight into the future.
The United States is known as a highly religious country, but a close look reveals many interesting variations in what people believe (or don’t) about God.
The Burj Khalifa was practically made to inspire a fear of heights. At 2,717 ft and 160 stories, the building formerly known as the Burj Dubai is the tallest building in Dubai, in Asia, and on the planet—it is literally the tallest freestanding thing ever made.
Some people seek the answers in the bottom of a teacup, a deck of tarot cards, even a fortune cookie. In the right frame of mind, breaking open “A new horizon awaits” can seem like the equivalent of getting an office memo saying you’ve been transferred to the West Coast.
Ralph Waldo Emerson believed “knowledge is the antidote to fear,” but he may have come to this conclusion with too much haste. Studies that look at phobias relative to education levels show mixed results. For example, those who achieved a degree beyond a bachelor’s are more likely to be afraid of a thunderstorm.
Universities typically stress the advancement of knowledge and intellectual integrity—but many college students routinely put themselves in the hands of Fate. The odds an undergraduate will wear lucky clothing as part of a behavioral ritual or superstition are 1 in 3.26. The odds he or she will strive to avoid “jinxes” are almost double that, 1 in 1.66 (60%).
If modern media is any indication, the paranormal has a tenacious hold on the American zeitgeist. Television and movies are saturated with shows and films about paranormal events and phenomena—the Syfy Channel’s pseudo-reality series Ghost Hunters is consistently one of cable’s most highly-watched shows and, during its nine years on FOX (1993-2002), The X-Files became one of popular entertainment’s most famous paranormal-related series of all time.
Many people—1 in 5.56, or about 18%—find airplane travel to be a frightening experience even though the numbers are reassuring. It’s unlikely a passenger will be involved in an airplane crash of any kind, even one with no fatalities. The odds that an airline passenger will be involved in a plane crash in a year are 1 in 10,790,000. Even though the odds heavily favor a safe landing, 2009 has been marked by a series of aviation accidents that can unsettle even the most frequent flyer.
Oh, Hollywood. The 1990 movie Arachnophobia was enough to strike fear into any pre-teen heart—those house-invading spiders were enormous.
Bruce Greyson, a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia Health System, displays simple images of butterflies, sailboats, and kites on a laptop in the operating room—just in case a patient has a near-death experience.
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