Posted on Sun, Nov. 20, 2005
Psychologist: ‘Alien’ faces are none other than Mother
BY RICHARD MORIN
Washington Post
Accounts of people who claim to have been abducted by aliens have one eerie similarity.
“When serious researchers like psychologist Frederick Malmstrom have asked self-proclaimed abductees what their out-of-this-world kidnappers looked like, they inevitably describe beings with large heads, big eyes, gray skin, smooth features, a barely visible or absent mouth and smallish bodies.
Malmstrom, a visiting scholar at the U.S. Air Force Academy, now thinks he recognizes that face. It’s Mommy — or at least the image of a “prototypical female face” that’s hard-wired into a baby’s brain and helps newborns instantly respond to their mothers.
Scientists have known for years that animals are born with certain visual recognition “templates” that help them survive.
In one famous study, a scientist found that newly hatched chickens automatically cowered from shadows in the shape of a predator (such as a hawk) while the shadow of a nonpredator — a goose — elicited no such fearful response.
There’s similar evidence that human babies are programmed to react to a generalized face.
Studies show that up until 2 months of age, an infant will react favorably to anything resembling a human face — even a Halloween mask.
In fact, when Malmstrom optically altered a photo of a woman in a way consistent with the characteristics of a newborn’s vision — astigmatism, an extremely shallow focal plane — the resulting face looked remarkably like those big-eyed aliens drawn by self-declared abductees, he reports in the latest issue of the magazine Skeptic, which features scholarly articles on the paranormal and other extraordinary claims.
Why do adults who claim to be abducted “see” their mothers, or at least this prototypical female face, and not some other important figure?
Malmstrom says the answer has to do with another familiar feature of alien-abduction accounts. Virtually all of the cases considered credible enough to study occurred when the abductees reported they were either falling asleep, or they were “remembered” while the subject was under hypnosis.”
Of course we all know for a “natural fact” that this is all bullcrap. Any abductee will tell you that THEIR experience is real-real 100% REAL! Psychology is for twits and statistically obsessed nitwits. Either that or they are part of the grand conspiracy to cover up the HORRIFYING reality that millions of people are getting abducted each year (suggesting that an entire fleet of mother ships, hundreds of thousands in saucers and tens of millions of aliens must be involved with this program.) The US and other governments are all part of the conspiracy making this the best kept secret outside of Elvis’s true hiding place.
Besides, everyone knows that aliens don’t have moms!
