Big Conspiracy Or Cognitive Dissonance

Self proclaimed UFO experts, historians, contactees pseudo-scientists and mythologists, frequently make reference to ufologists suicides, untimely deaths or mysterious accidents. Of course these tragic events are used to justify the Big Conspiracy theory: the victims knew to much about the real nature of UFOs.and the cover-up took care of them.

However, there are a few things that these people doesn't take into account.

In 1957 the psychologist Leon Festinger proposed the cognitive dissonance theory, which states that a powerful motive to maintain cognitive consistency can give rise to irrational and sometimes maladaptive behavior.

Cognitive dissonance theory tells us that there is a tendency for individuals to seek consistency among their cognitions (i.e., beliefs, opinions). When there is an inconsistency between attitudes or behaviors, something must change to eliminate the dissonance.

In other words, you cannot believe that extraterrestrial civilizations are visiting our Earth and, at the same time recognize that in the real world we live, there are absolutely no evidences of these invisible, inaudible, undetectable, (imaginary) extraterrestrial visitors.

You cannot recognize the scientific statistics that points to the fact that 96 % of all the UFO sightings are produced by perfectly normal natural and astronomical events or man made artifacts and also talk about a "mysterious phenomenon".

If a UFO expert tells his audience that "UFO sightings are massive in the whole world" while he is conscious of the 96 percent statistics. Eventually he will experience that peculiar discomfort produced by the awareness of his own lack of consistency. That discomfort sometimes severe, is a manifestation of cognitive dissonance.

In fact, the individual who becomes a professional in the UFO-ET Industry, lives in two different worlds.

In one of these worlds we find his family, his daily life and practical convictions while in the other one he coexists with nonsense, discredited sources, pathological individuals, imaginary conspiracies and extraterrestrial visitors.

This dissociation and the concurrent feeling of cognitive dissonance will inevitably produce irrational behaviour and a growing inadaptability and perhaps conflicts with his social and familiar environment.

If this is so, these personal and social problems should not be attributed to the "Big Conspiracy".

My advice is a serious, sincere and private meeting with ourselves, with our inconsistencies and contradictions. To sell a fantasy world as if it were real is not an easy task.