Blood-typing as a Pseudo-personality Theory and Diversity of Its Explanatory Styles

Abstract

The hypothesis that blood type is related to personality, which we may call blood-typing, is a pseudo-personality theory that has been popular among Japanese lay people for some time. It all started with a paper by Takeji Furukawa in the 1920's. Today, there are many exponents of different versions of this hypothesis, which resulted in a diversity of explanatory styles. In this study we classified explanatory styles of the hypothesis, disseminated through television programs during the latest boom of blood-typing. We found four types: traditional, biological, framework, and traits-addition. Traditional varieties were put forth by successors of Furukawa's ideas. Biological-mediation versions tried to explain the relation between blood type and personality using such new academic knowledge as theory of evolution and brain science. Exponents of framework utilization merely used blood-typing in the context of fortune telling, whereas the last group simply added traits of their choice found in their own specialties, to the original hypothesis. We concluded that none of the varieties discussed here has been successful in providing sufficient logical basis for their claims.View full abstract