Psychosocial hypothesis
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 📖 Term
Contents 8
| Type | Term |
|---|---|
| Also known as | psychosocial UFO hypothesis, PSH |
The psychosocial hypothesis (PSH) holds that at least some UFO reports are best explained by psychological and social factors, such as perception, dreams, rumours, cultural images and the emotional climate of the times, rather than by alien craft. It is the main rival to the extraterrestrial hypothesis among skeptical researchers.[1] It is especially popular in Britain, among researchers such as David Clarke and Hilary Evans, the editors of Magonia magazine and many contributors to Fortean Times. It has also been popular in France since Michel Monnerie's 1977 book Et si les ovnis n'existaient pas? ("What if UFOs don't exist?").[1] Unlike outright debunking, its supporters treat UFOs as a subject worth serious study, approached skeptically.[1]
The argument
The hypothesis starts from the finding that most UFO reports have ordinary causes, such as stars and planets, aircraft lights and balloons. Supporters suggest that an unusual emotional climate distorts how such things are perceived and how strange they seem.[1] Contact claims seem to demand such an approach. There have been at least 70 claims of meeting Venusians and at least 50 of meeting Martians, though both planets are now known to be lifeless. Hoaxing explains some, but dreams, hallucinations and other mental processes are clearly involved.[1] By extension, supporters argue that other evidence of alien visitors can be explained the same way. The dream-like, culturally shaped imagery of many reports makes the extraterrestrial hypothesis unnecessary and, by Occam's razor, probably wrong.[1]
Origins
The term first gained prominence in English in April 1984, when Magonia's cover featured "The Rise of the Psycho-social Hypothesis" by Jacques Scornaux and Peter Rogerson.[1] It came from French debates sparked by Monnerie's Le Naufrage des extra-terrestres (1979), which offered "le modèle socio-psychologique" as a direct challenge to the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Claude Maugé had outlined the "socio-psychological model" for Magonia readers in 1983.[1] Since 1968 the Magonia circle had been exploring alternatives, feeling the ETH could not explain "high strangeness" cases. Roger Sandell described giving up "nuts and bolts" ufology after studying a 1905 Welsh wave that resembled ghost stories and religious visions more than spacecraft.[1] Rogerson came to see the rise of a modern mythology. He moved from paranormal ideas such as psi and the collective unconscious to "a fully normal system of psychological processes," and linked flaps to times of social change. He noted, for example, that the 1954 French wave came at "a time of national defeat and government crisis."[1]
Science-fiction roots
French sociologist Bertrand Méheust found striking parallels between UFO stories and pre-1947 science fiction after discovering Jean de la Hire's novel The Lightning Wheel (1908). In it, characters are lifted by a ray into a glowing, humming flying disc.[1] Pulp fiction already had force fields, teleportation, beings passing through walls, engine-stopping rays, and humanoids who spy on, experiment on or breed with humans. Michel Meurger expanded the study with nearly 800 footnotes.[1] Jacques Vallée noted that UFO electromagnetic effects appeared in earlier fiction, including the first flying-saucer novel, Bernard Newman's The Flying Saucer (1948).[1] Researchers trace the grey alien to Hugo Gernsback's pulps of 1926–36, which favoured big-brained, weak-bodied future beings derived from H. G. Wells. They argue that its black eyes and thin neck came from the aliens designed for Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).[1]
The "saucer error"
In 1977 J. Allen Hynek asked: "Why flying saucers? Why not flying cubes or flying pyramids...?"[1] Writer Martin Kottmeyer offered an answer. He noted that Kenneth Arnold, whose 24 June 1947 sighting began the modern era, had said his objects "were not circular." Arnold had told reporter Bill Bequette that they flew "like a saucer if you skip it across the water," describing their motion, not their shape. His report to the Air Force days later shows a shape more like a shoe heel.[1] Yet 82 percent of 853 sightings collected by Ted Bloecher for 1947 described discs or saucers. By one tally, 82 percent of craft in abduction reports are saucers too.[1] Kottmeyer argued in "Entirely Unpredisposed" (Magonia, 1990): "Why would extraterrestrials redesign their craft to conform to Bequette's error?"[1] Defenders of the ETH point to saucer sightings before Arnold, but supporters reply that such reports were rare and unpublished before 1947.[1]
Historical waves
Predictions that flaps would follow Mars's closest approaches failed.[1] Rogerson urged a systematic search for pre-1947 waves, with attention to "the social, religious, political and scientific background."[1]
- Wales, 1905. The wave came amid a religious revival. One witness met a black-clad man she called Satan, and another figure turned into a black dog, motifs that echo later men in black.[1]
- Phantom airships. Nigel Watson studied the March–May 1909 British panic over German spy airships. Phantom-airship scares have been catalogued from Russia and Poland in 1892 to Norway in 1914–16, usually amid fears of war. See mystery airships of 1896–97.[1]
- Later forms. These gave way to 1930s "ghost fliers," then foo fighters and ghost rockets, as technology changed.[1]
Supporters generally reject "mass hysteria" as an explanation, preferring rumour and gossip. They also doubt Philip Klass's view that media coverage alone drives flaps.[1]
Carl Jung
Carl Jung's Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies (1958) is often seen as a founding work of the approach, though his use of "synchronicity" also makes him a forerunner of paranormal theories.[1] In 1958 the Associated Press quoted him as saying that saucers were real and showed "signs of intelligent guidance." Jung replied: "This report is altogether false." He said he was uncommitted, and that his correction to United Press went almost unreported. "One must draw the conclusion that news affirming the existence of UFOs is welcome, but that skepticism seems to be undesirable," he wrote, a fact he thought "surely merits the psychologist's interest."[1]
Notes on the earlier version of this article
The earlier version's points are supported by the source read here and have been kept and expanded.[1]
References
- Psychosocial UFO hypothesis — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Psychosocial UFO hypothesis”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
This page was last edited on 31 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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