Blog 3: Aliens and UFO abductions

            I feel like the UFO abduction lecture obviously ties well to the false memory lecture as well. This is a really weird area, because a lot of people seem to report these kind of phenomena, as well as the lecture pointed out, “past live” experiences. I feel like part of what goes into this is someone seeing a story, or reading something about this online, and then trying to connect an experience they may have had, to what they saw. The lecture points out that with the rise in popularity of alien and alien abduction shows, the reports of these activity by people went up. I think that would be an example of confirmation bias that someone would use to try and augment their position on something. As the lecture points out, hypnosis is not truly effective, and that the hypnotist can even influence someone. They can plant an idea or suggestion into the person’s mind, and then that person can take that and run with it. Someone with a creative mind can then create a whole new scenario, that did not happen, just based on that suggestion. This then leads to the hypnotize strengthening their belief, even though they were just influenced by the person testing them. I do not know what the explanation for these could be. It is probably some kind of trauma, or maybe instable mental state for various reasons. As said, the rise of alien stuff in media could also draw in these types of people. They already appear to be the type with open and creative minds, so if you were to plant some suggestions or influence them a bit, they can spin it off into some kind of fable, even though it could contradict something else they said.