To what extent can reports of strange, paranormal events - like for example alleged abductions by aliens - be explained by people simply being prone to hallucinations and fantasies? There is some reluctance to rely on such explanations because they appear to denigrate those making the claims, but there is evidence that these explanations have real potential.

The November/December 2005 Skeptical Inquirer reports on research discussed at the conference on Developing Perspectives on Anomalous Experiences, held in the United Kingdom at Liverpool Hope University College on June 4, 2005:

Another presentation likely to have been of particular interest to readers of SI was given by Chris French. French and his colleagues Oulia Santomauro, Victoria Hamilton, Rachel Fox, and Michael Thalbourne) have recently completed collecting data comparing a group of nineteen “experiencers” (i.e., individuals who claim to have had contact with extraterrestrials) with a control group on a number of psychological measures.

Experiencers were found to score significantly higher than the control group on a number of relevant psychological measures including dissociativity, absorption, tendency to hallucinate, fantasy proneness, and incidence of sleep paralysis. This pattern is consistent with the idea that experiencers have a markedly different psychological profile than nonexperiencers and, in particular, they have a profile that may indicate greater susceptibility to false memories.

Why does it sound insulting to say that what a person thought they experienced may have been due, at least in part, to hallucination and fantasy-proneness? First is probably the high level of certainty with which people hold these beliefs. When a person is utterly convinced about the truth of something, telling them that they may be mistaken will be greeted with defensiveness. We should not, however, accept an account at face value merely because a person is certain of it.

Another reason may be that there is something uncomfortable about the idea that one has experienced a hallucination. It’s almost a character flaw in the eyes of some, it seems, because it suggest an inability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. The fact is, though, that everyone makes mistakes and some are simply more prone to this sort of cognitive error. This would be less of an issue if people learned to establish a bit of critical distance between themselves and their beliefs — especially those that are obviously contradictory to what is generally known about reality.

 

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