Symposium on unidentified flying objects: hearings before the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, Ninetieth Congress, second session, July 29, 1968.

103
In
the
second
place,
they
have not
generally
involved
a
prolonged.
observation
of
a
phenomenon by
people
who
were calm, not
emotion-
ally
upset.
A
characteristic
example
of
hysterical
contagion
would
be
the
recent
study
by
Back
and
Kerckhoff, supported
by
the National
Science
Foundation.
The
book
reporting
on
this
study
is
called
"The
June Bug."
It
was
a
case
of
hysterical
contagion
among
the
employees
of
a
factory
in
North
Carolina.
It
is
one of
the
most
thoroughly
reported
and
studied
incidents
of
this
sort.
It
resembles the
kind of
thing
we
are
talking
about
in
almost
no
respect.
I
find
it
very
difficult
to
find
elements in
common,
other
than
the
fact
that
some
people
believed
something
that
was
difficult
to
verify.
The
employees
were
convinced that they
were
being
bitten
by
poison-
ous
insects,
resulting
in
fainting
and
other
symptoms
such
as
rashes.
All
medical
officers,
all
careful research
on
this,
was
unable
to
turn
up
any
hard
evidence that
such
an
insect
was
present,
or
that
there
wasany
standard medical
accounting
for
these
symptoms.
But
these
were
people in
close
constant
contact,
sharing
a
particular
set
of problems
and
frustrations
that
raised their
level
of
anxiety.
The
epidemic can be
interpreted
as
a
convenient
way
of
escaping
the
problem of
coping with very
difficult
circumstances.
I
have
said
that
I
think
in
isolated
cases
you can
find
a
similar
thing
in observa-tions
of
unidentified flying
objects,
but
if
we
look at the
hard-core,
well
-documented
cases,
I
see
practically
no
resemblance.
Another
important
thing to note
about
the
witnesses
in
the
best
sightings
of
UFO's
is
that very
commonly—as
has
been mentioned,
I
believe,
by Dr. McDonald—they
first
try
to explain
their
observation
in
some
very
familiar
terms.
This
is
the
well-known
and
labeled
psy-chological process
of
"assimilation."
People
first
try to
assimilate their
observation into
something
understood
and
known
and
familiar.
This
is
quite
contrary to the
kind of
argument
frequently
built
into
the hypothesis
of
hysterical
contagion,
namely,
that
character-
istically
witnesses
are eager, are motivated,
to
see
strange
objects.
Another
important thing
to
notice
about
the
witnesses
in
these cases
is
of
course
their reluctance
to
report.
We
have
had some
mention of
that.
This,for
one
thing,counters the
argument
of
publicity
seeking as
a
motive
in
some
of
the
best
cases.
It
incidently
runs
contrary to
most
experience
of
social
psycologists
engaged
in public opinion
research,
in polling,
and
contrary to the
experience
of
experienced
precinct
workers
in
politics.
Those
people
who
have not
tried this
kind of
thing expect people
not
to
want
to talk to
them, but
when
you
start
ringing
doorbells,
the
striking
thing about the
American
people
is it
is
often
difficult
to stop
them from
telling
you
what
they
believe.
Yet
in
instances
of
unidentified flying objects,
there
has
often
been a
marked
reluctance to talk
about them.
I
can
illustrate
this
anecdotally
simply
to
make
my
point.
When I
was on
the faculty at the University
of Minnesota,
a
student
came
to
me,
having heard that
I
had some
interest
in
this question.
He
in-
formed
me
that his father,
a
colonel,
an
artillery
colonel in
Korea—
this
was
at the time of the
Korean
conflict—had flown over
a
hill
in
Korea
in his observer plane,
and found
(right next to
him
virtually)
a
characteristic unidentified flying object with the usual kind of con-
figuration.
It had promptly
retreated
upwards. It had
frightened