Does television news about UFOs affect viewers’ UFO beliefs?: An experimental investigation

Many recent surveys indicate that belief in paranormal events is widespread among Americans. While scientists and skeptics have frequently bemoaned the obvious role that the mass media play in misleading people to accept paranormal events uncritically, there has been remarkably little research evidence to substantiate media impact in this realm. In the experiment reported in this paper, viewers were exposed to one of two different news stories about UFOs. The two stories differed according to the extent to which the existence of UFOs was discredited by some scientific authority. Because the stories were naturally occurring segments from a network newscast, they also differed in terms of the topic of focus, the people featured, etc. The results revealed that subsequent UFO beliefs were affected by the story manipulation. The story that included discrediting information from a scientific authority discouraged UFO beliefs.

Key concepts:

• 1‐ versus 2‐sided messages
• TV news
• UFO beliefs
• paranormal content
• media effects