93 lines
4.2 KiB
Plaintext
93 lines
4.2 KiB
Plaintext
SUBJECT: DIAGNOSES OF ALIEN FILE: UFO3227
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Diagnoses of Alien
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Kidnappings That Result
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From Conjunction Effect
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by Robyn M. Dawes and Matthew Mulford
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(The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 18, No. 1, Fall 1993, Copyright 1993 by
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the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the
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Paranormal, 3965 Rensch Road, Buffalo, NY 14228, published quarterly
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with a membership/subscription rate of $25/yr.)
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Events and feelings may be better recalled when they occur in
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combination than singly, to the point that a conjunction of two alleged
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events or feelings may be iudged to have occurred with greater frequency
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in one's life than one of them alone. One part of a coniunction can
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facilitate recall of the conjunction, and hence of another part of the
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experience - and combinations of events can be judged to be more
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probable than their components (Tversky and Kahneman 1983). The observer
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to whom it is reported, however, knows that such a coniunction is
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necessarily less probable than any one of its components. Thus, the
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observer may attach special significance to such a conjunction.
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For example, in supporting a conclusion that post-traumatic
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stress from kidnapping by aliens is a major mental-health problem in
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this country (allegedly affecting at least 2 percent of the population),
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Hopkins and Jacobs (1992) cite the rate of affirmative responses to a
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recent Roper Poll question: "How often has this happened to you: Waking
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up paralyzed with a sense of a strange person or presence or something
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in the room ?" Their rationale for considering affirmative responses
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particularly diagnostic of alien kidnapping involves the conjunction of
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the two components in the question: "A fleeting sensation of paralysis
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is not unusual in either hypnogogic or hypnopompic states, but adding
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the phrase 'with a sense of a strange person or presence in the room'
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forcefu11y narrows the scope of the question" (p. 56).
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As part of a (much) larger study, we asked that same Roper Poll
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question of 144 subjects (mainly University of Oregon students and some
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townspeople interested in the $20 pay for two hours). Forty percent
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answered that this had happened to them at least once. A randomly
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selected control group of 144 subjects in the same study were asked
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simply how often they remembered waking up paralyzed. Only 14 percent
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answered that this had happened to them at least once, (chi-square =
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24.26; p < .001, phi = .29). (See Table 1.) The contingency was stronger
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for women (phi = .44) than for men (phi = .17), significantly so
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according to a Goodman-Plackett chi-square value of 4.74. Nevertheless
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it was significant for both sexes (with chi-squares of 25.38 and 4.43,
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respectively).
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Thus, due to a conjunction effect in memory, the added phrase
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"with a sense of a strange person or presence . . . in the room"
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actually "broadens the scope" of the question, rather than narrowing it.
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Hopkins and Jacobs are, of course, correct in maintaining that the
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additional phrase _should_ "narrow the scope." It's just that the phrase
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doesn't. What they have discovered, therefore, is not evidence of alien
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kidnappings, but of a common irrationality in the way we recall our
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lives.
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References
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Hopkins, B., and D. M. Jacobs. 1992. "How
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This Survey Was Designed." In Bigelow
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Holding Company, _An Analysis of the
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Data from Three Maior Surveys Conducted
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by the Roper Organization_, pp. 55-58.
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Tversky, A., and D. Kahneman. 1983.
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Extensional versus intuitive reasoning:
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The conjunction fallacy in probability
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judgments. _Psychological Review_, 90: 293-
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315.
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---
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Robyn M. Dawes is University Professor in the Department of Social and
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Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
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15213-3890. Matthew Mulford is in the Department of Political Science,
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University of Oregon, Eugene 97403.
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