http://www.purdue.edu/UNS/Clips/clips.01.98/971229.BostonGlobe 971229.BostonGlobe

The Boston Globe

December 29, 1997, Monday, City Edition SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY; Pg. C2

How TV Boosts Belief in UFOs

BEHAVIOR BRIEFS

Dolores Kong, Globe Staff

IF you believe in UFOs, you may be watching too many TV shows or reading too many news stories about alien abductions.

That's the suggestion from two studies published by Purdue University communication researchers, one in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media and the other in Communication Reports.

Of 120 people surveyed in a small midwest city, those who said they had never had a supernatural experience but did watch shows like "The X-Files" were significantly more likely to believe in space aliens or ghosts than those who didn't watch the shows. (Those who said they had had a supernatural experience didn't need television to convince them.)

"Seeing is no longer believing," says Glenn G. Sparks, professor of communication and lead author of the studies, especially as TV programs more often blur fiction and reality and use technology to manipulate images.

And of the 120 students in the second study, designed to assess the impact of news stories about UFOs, those who read a version of the story with remarks by a scientist seeming to confirm the report were significantly more likely to believe in UFOs than those who read a version in which no scientist commented.

Interestingly, a story quoting a skeptical scientist did not significantly weaken the readers' belief in alien space ships. The researchers theorize that the mention of a scientist, even a critical one, tends to legitimize the account.