{"id":72355,"date":"2018-04-18T13:05:22","date_gmt":"2018-04-18T18:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=72355"},"modified":"2018-04-18T13:08:10","modified_gmt":"2018-04-18T18:08:10","slug":"the-sociology-behind-the-x-files","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2018\/04\/18\/the-sociology-behind-the-x-files\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sociology Behind the X-Files"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally Posted at TSP Clippings<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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Photo Credit: Val Astraverkhau, Flickr CC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Throughout history, human beings have been enthralled by the idea of the paranormal. While we might think that UFOs and ghosts belong to a distant and obscure dimension, social circumstances help to shape how we envision the supernatural. In\u00a0a recent\u00a0interview<\/a>\u00a0with\u00a0New York Magazine<\/em>, sociologist\u00a0Joseph O. Baker<\/a>\u00a0describes the social aspects of Americans\u2019 beliefs about UFOs.<\/p>\n

Baker argues that pop culture shapes our understandings of aliens. In the 1950s and 1960s, pop culture imagined aliens in humanoid form, typically as very attractive Swedish blonde types with shining eyes. By the 1970s and 1980s, the abductor narrative took hold and extraterrestrials were represented as the now iconic image of the little gray abductor \u2014 small, grey-skinned life-forms with huge hairless heads and large black eyes. Baker posits that one of the main causes of UFOs\u2019 heightened popularity during this time was the extreme distrust of the government following incidents such as Watergate. Baker elaborates,<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there is something to be said for a lack of faith in government and institutions in that era, and that coincided with UFOs\u2019 rise in popularity. The lack of trust in the government, and the idea that the government knows something about this \u2014 those two things went together, and you can see it in the public reaction post-Vietnam, to Watergate, all that stuff.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While the individual characteristics of \u201cbelievers\u201d are hard to determine, survey evidence suggests that men and people from low-income backgrounds are more likely to believe in the existence of alien life. Baker says that believing is also dependent upon religious participation rather than education or income. In his words,<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the other strongest predictors is not participating as strongly in forms of organized religion. In some sense, there\u2019s a bit of a clue there about what\u2019s going on with belief \u2014 it\u2019s providing an alternative belief system. If you look at religious-service attendance, there will be a strong negative effect there for belief in UFOs.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Baker\u2019s research on the paranormal<\/a>\u00a0indicates that social circumstances influence belief in extraterrestrial beings. In short, these social factors help to shape whether you are\u00a0a Mulder or a Scully<\/a>. Believing in UFOs goes beyond abductions and\u00a0encounters of the Third Kind<\/a>. In the absence of trust in government and religious institutions, UFOs represent an appealing and mysterious alternative belief system.<\/p>\n

Isabel Arriagada<\/a>\u00a0(@arriagadaisabe<\/a>)\u00a0<\/span>is a Ph.D. student in the sociology department at the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on the development of prison policies in South America and the U.S. and how technology shapes new experiences of imprisonment.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally Posted at TSP Clippings Throughout history, human beings have been enthralled by the idea of the paranormal. While we might think that UFOs and ghosts belong to a distant and obscure dimension, social circumstances help to shape how we envision the supernatural. In\u00a0a recent\u00a0interview\u00a0with\u00a0New York Magazine, sociologist\u00a0Joseph O. Baker\u00a0describes the social aspects of Americans\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1851,"featured_media":72361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2018\/04\/463827036_cebab19699_o-e1524074658917.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1851"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72355"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72362,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72355\/revisions\/72362"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}