Sunday, April 4, 2010

Fantasy proneness

One of the topics which I was interested in as far back as the late nineteen eighties, was the subject of the fantasy-prone personality and how it might possibly assist to explain UFO abductions.

Robert Bartholomew and I were the first people to suggest that it would be worthwhile to test abductees using a fantasy-prone scale. Several people did just this, and it appeared that the finding was that abductees were no more fantasy-prone than control subjects. I remember attending the Boston, Mass. abduction conference in 1992 and discussing the fantasy-prone hypothesis, and concluding that it did not explain abductions.

I was therefore surprised to find that people were still examining the idea, in the last few years. I came across an item in a recent Fortean Times magazine (click here for the full text.) I then conducted an Internet search for other articles and came across seven such studies. I posted a comment to the FT article which may be read (click here and scroll down for my comments) on the FT website.

I'd appreciate hearing of any other studies which you may be aware of.