America’s Alien Problem: Why We Ignore Common Sense in Favor of Belief
In the span of just weeks, two major U.S. releases captured the nation’s attention: Bugonia, Yorgos Lanthimos’s darkly playful alien tale, and The Age of Disclosure, a documentary staged like science fiction, where whistleblowers insist that nonhuman craft exist and the government is concealing the truth about alien contact. Their timing is not accidental. Both arrived on the heels of the first public congressional UFO hearings in over fifty years, in the middle of a nationwide spike in reported sightings. The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) documented 757 new UAP (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) incidents between May 2023 and June 2024—more than in many previous years combined—and some analysts now describe 2025 as the most active reporting year in history. We are not just witnessing reports of the unexplained; we are witnessing the psychic temperature of a country—its anxieties, conspiratorial hunger, and collective imagination—made visible.
At the end of Bugonia, when the alien empress finally speaks—exactly as the conspiracy theorist had foretold—she delivers her verdict to her crew, all of them dressed in strange, animal-like furred spacesuits: “We believe it is over. They have had their time. And in their time they have imperiled the life they share, and so we have decided their time will end.” The aliens then waddle away in eerie unison, and the empress punctures the protective Earth bubble. What follows is an instant apocalypse: humanity wiped out in a scene that resembles the visual language of the Rapture—a sudden and absolute religious experience.
But The Age of Disclosure, Dan Farah’s latest sci-fi-styled documentary production, framed as a serious exposé of government UFO secrecy, ultimately reveals nothing new. It offers no evidence, only a procession of interchangeable older men linked to government or aerospace who repeat secondhand stories about witnesses who said they back-engineered crashed spaceships, recovered “biologics” (the new fancy term for aliens), and looming threats. At the watch party I attended, a few of us sat nonplussed at the end because, although the film insists danger is near, we wondered: danger from what, exactly?
Why are aliens capturing our cultural imagination now?
Most alien or UFO reports1 involve sightings of lights, orbs, or spheres that move oddly or swiftly and vanish silently—a pattern that has remained consistent over time. Some observers also report cigar-shaped objects or triangular craft. Many of these phenomena are reported worldwide. In 2025, the National UFO Reporting Center had already logged 2,174 UFO/UAP reports by midyear, a sharp increase from 1,492 reports during the same period in 2024. This rise may reflect the establishment of the AARO and renewed government attention, which have made reporting easier and less stigmatized, not to mention nudging people to look up more and notice what was previously missed (Starlink satellites are often reported as UAPs). Increased public awareness through media coverage, documentaries, and congressional hearings also encourages people to report sightings they might previously have ignored. This explanation, of course, presumes the alien sightings are real. Are they?
An alternative interpretation—commonly referred to as the Psychosocial UFO Hypothesis—traces back to Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, whose 1958 work Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky, proposed that UFOs reflect psychic and cultural realities, not extraterrestrial ones.2 Jung suggested that flying saucers emerge in the collective imagination during eras of social disorientation, technological upheaval, or existential threat, functioning as modern myths that carry the weight of collective anxiety and longing. Rather than evidence of literal beings from another world, UFOs become symbols of fear, hope, salvation, or invasion—a projection of what the psyche cannot resolve. From this view, alien encounters are psychologically real even if not physically tangible: They reveal something true about the human mind and the cultural moment, not necessarily the cosmos.
It is unsurprising that UFO sightings are on the rise today. Scholars have observed that UFO reports tend to increase during periods of societal crisis—such as existential uncertainty, geopolitical tension, or rapid technological change—reflecting collective anxieties rather than objective phenomena.3 In times of social distress and distrust, people are more likely to assign meaning or threat to ordinary or ambiguous events. Some psychological-cognitive theories suggest that ambiguous stimuli—lights in the sky, radar blips, or unexplained objects or events—are interpreted through cultural narratives and heightened pattern seeking.4 This is sometimes called the “low information zone,” in which blurry photographs and grainy videos stimulate the mind to fill in the missing spaces or connect the dots into meaningful patterns of an extraterrestrial nature.
We live in a time of deep distrust in politics, corporations, and the media, which makes people question what they are told. Heightened fears from draconian COVID policies (“they closed the schools, restaurants, and parks so the pandemic must be really bad!”), hypermediated climate collapse (“if we don’t do something in twelve years all is lost”), threats of rising fascism (“Trump, MAGA!”), threats of an AI takeover (“the singularity is near!”), and rising nihilistic political violence (“burn it all down and start over!”) have created a pervasive state of anxiety. This fear, combined with distrust of formerly trusted institutions, fuels conspiracy thinking, including beliefs about aliens. With few reliable frameworks to navigate uncertainty, many turn outward for explanations or as distractions from personal responsibility.
In Bugonia, Lanthimos suggests that conspiracy beliefs often emerge as a response to real pain and injustice. The film’s central conspiracist grew up with an addicted, neglectful mother and later lost her to a medical experiment. His belief in aliens and corporate malevolence is not baseless; it is rooted in trauma, exploitation such as pharmaceutical misconduct and corporate neglect, and social alienation. In this way, the film does not simply mock conspiracists as “crazy,” but explores the social and psychological conditions that give rise to such beliefs.
To these we can add two more conditions contributing to Americans’ increasing belief in UFOs: the decline of religious faith and a reduced reliance on instinct and common sense.
As traditional faith wanes, many turn to belief systems grounded not in evidence or instinct but in ideology and narrative—UFO conspiracies being a prime example. Belief is migrating from shared moral and religious frameworks to culturally mediated myths that promise meaning and belonging. In this sense, aliens function as a modern sacred avatar, a substitute for God, mystery, and existential structure.
This mindset—that what you see may not be true, or what you don’t see is probably true—has fundamentally contributed to the widespread and enduring belief in a U.S. government cover-up of UFOs.
The complexity of contemporary society has been linked to a reduced dependence on intuitive judgment and common sense, making individuals more susceptible to being drawn into ideology and conspiracy theories.5 This effect has been amplified over the last two decades by our deep immersion in the online world, coupled with persistent global political instabilities. These factors have ushered in an era of “alternative facts” (on the right) and “postmodernism” (on the left) for many Americans, where the core assumption is that there is more than one truth or no truth at all.
This mindset—that what you see may not be true, or what you don’t see is probably true—has fundamentally contributed to the widespread and enduring belief in a U.S. government cover-up of UFOs. Thus, even though most individuals have never personally seen or experienced a UFO firsthand, they are readily pulled into the conspiratorial narrative and accept it primarily because of the powerful surrounding cultural and ideological framework. It’s ideology over instinct.
Common Sense and Instinct
Evolutionarily, humans developed heuristics to make rapid decisions in uncertain environments—recognizing patterns, detecting threats, and navigating social hierarchies. These shared mental shortcuts form a basis of common knowledge, allowing groups to act cohesively, from identifying safe foods and interpreting emotional cues to cooperating in collective tasks. This intuitive knowledge also extends to social cognition: Humans can rapidly infer intentions, predict behavior, and synchronize actions with others, often without conscious reasoning. In this sense, common knowledge is not arbitrary but adaptive, providing a shared framework that increases survival, cooperation, and cultural stability. As Steven Pinker argues, common knowledge is foundational to human society because it enables social coordination and complementary decision making.6 Much of this understanding operates beneath awareness, signaled through involuntary behaviors like laughter, tears, blushing, eye contact, and blunt speech—embodied expressions of the intuitive knowledge that binds us.
Paradoxically, people often engage in elaborate efforts to obscure, ignore, or deliberately avoid acknowledging common sense and, tragically, their own instincts. The tendency to avoid recognizing widely shared knowledge is well-documented in psychology and sociology. This behavior, known as information avoidance, allows individuals to shield their happiness, preserve existing beliefs, or maintain social standing. Research also shows that information avoidance can serve as a coping mechanism in situations of uncertainty or threat, helping people reduce cognitive dissonance and emotional discomfort.7
People sometimes engage in information avoidance not merely to protect their beliefs or personal happiness, but to align with a group ideology and secure a vital sense of belonging. According to Social Identity Theory,8 individuals derive meaning, status, and self-esteem from the groups they belong to; consequently, they may reject information that threatens the group’s worldview. Specifically, people may set aside their personal instincts or empirical skepticism to be part of a community—be it political, spiritual, ideological, or conspiratorial—that claims to possess special, hidden, or insider knowledge. Aligning with a group that asserts access to deeper truths, secret insights, or a more “awakened” understanding often feels more meaningful and elevating to one’s identity than simply accepting one’s ordinary, concrete life.9
In addition, people often bypass common sense by relying on cognitively unfalsifiable ideas—using claims for aliens such as “trans-dimensional,” “telepathic,” or “unperceivable by ordinary minds,” which place the phenomenon in a realm where no evidence could ever contradict it. This creates epistemic shielding, where the claim becomes immune to challenge: Any lack of proof is simply reframed as expected, since the phenomenon supposedly exists beyond ordinary perception or logic.10 This often involves setting aside common-sense reasoning—such as the implausibility of coordinated alien visits, the immense logistical challenges of secrecy, or the extreme hazards of space travel. By suspending these rational doubts, individuals can fully engage with the group, strengthening both cohesion and commitment to shared beliefs like UFOs.
Believing the government hides alien knowledge signals social intelligence and alignment with the modern order of suspicion, whereas trusting official explanations can appear naïve or even irrational—suggesting that disbelief in conspiracy has become more deviant than belief itself.
System Justification offers another cogent explanation for why people override instinct, even without empathy-driven motives. This psychological process leads individuals to defend and reinforce the prevailing system or worldview, even when it may run counter to their own interests.11 In the context of UFO belief, the dominant “system” is no longer governmental authority but rather the conspiratorial worldview itself. Institutional distrust has become the cultural status quo, so accepting the narrative of a cover-up functions as a way of justifying and maintaining that system.12 Believing the government hides alien knowledge signals social intelligence and alignment with the modern order of suspicion, whereas trusting official explanations can appear naïve or even irrational—suggesting that disbelief in conspiracy has become more deviant than belief itself.
A further reason that common sense is bypassed in UFO narratives stems from a psychological profile that makes the alien stories uniquely meaningful to the participants. The key players in The Age of Disclosure documentary, reflecting the wider UFO conspiracy community, are largely older White men, often from the Baby Boomer generation, including many former Cold War intelligence and military personnel. They were trained for decades to perceive patterns, secrets, and threats everywhere, interpreting anomalies like radar returns, classified flights, and black-project aircraft. This environment rewarded suspicion, dramatic interpretation, and assuming hidden motives—a mindset that doesn’t simply switch off upon retirement. Once retired, many lose their high status and sense of purpose; they miss being “in the know” and having a mission. UFOs restore all of that, allowing them to be relevant again by “exposing secrecy,” “protecting humanity,” and “warning people about what’s coming.” This powerful way of restoring identity and meaning creates a significant blind spot for rational facts or instinct, cementing a narrative where they matter again.
A more common-sense approach—one uninfluenced by ideology—would align closely with how neuroscientists are beginning to frame the perception of unidentified objects. A trio of researchers, for example, recently posed this question: How can we “explain why healthy, intelligent, honest, and psychologically normal people might easily misperceive lights in the sky as threatening or extraordinary objects, especially in the context of WEIRD (western, educated, industrial, rich, and democratic) societies”?13 These researchers draw on predictive-coding theories of perception, which suggests that the brain constantly generates top-down predictions based on prior experience. When sensory input is ambiguous or weak, such as distant lights in the sky or other celestial stimuli, perception becomes highly subject to existing beliefs and expectations. Frohlich, Christov-Moore, and Reggente argue that in Western contexts, where skepticism and distrust of institutions are amplified, psychologically normal people are more likely to interpret ordinary phenomena as potentially extraordinary, thereby reinforcing their mistaken beliefs and fostering the acceptance of conspiratorial explanations.14
Decline of Traditional Faith
Another factor reinforcing the heightened interest and belief in UFOs is the dramatic decline of traditional faith systems in the U.S. and globally, especially in Europe.15 We are living through a moment of profound spiritual and cultural upheaval, marked by widespread secularization. Data from the Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Studies (2007–2024) clearly illustrate this shift in the United States: The share of Americans identifying as Christian has dropped significantly from 78 percent in 2007 to 62 percent in 2023–2024. Much of this shift is driven by the growth of the religiously unaffiliated—those identifying as atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular”—the “nones.” Furthermore, a stark generational divide exists, as only approximately 46 percent of younger Americans (ages 18–24) identify as Christian, contrasted with about 80 percent of older generations. Related measures of religious practice have also declined, including the share of Americans who believe in God “with absolute certainty,” pray daily, or attend regular services.
These trends are not isolated to the U.S., reflecting global secularization that affects major world religions, including Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. A 2023 analysis of the World Values Survey data found that age and income are among the strongest predictors for decreasing religiosity, confirming that modern economic and demographic shifts correlate strongly with this decline.16 The consequence of the decline in traditional religious structures (churches, organized faith, and institutional religion) is the creation of a spiritual and cultural void. This vacuum can then be filled by alternative spiritualities, existential searches, or other belief systems that offer meaning, structure, and a sense of the transcendent—including UFOs, alien-mythologies, “otherworldly” beliefs, and nature mysticism.
As younger generations grow up without strong religious roots, their search for meaning and a comprehensive moral framework often shifts toward political, psychiatric, or identity-based frameworks rather than centuries-old orthodox religions. While these new frames of belief are influenced by contemporary cultural anxieties, they tend to be less stabilizing and reassuring than traditional faith and wisdom. Studies of the culture wars indicate that, instead of offering equanimous guidance, these ideologies frequently contribute to an “us versus them” positionality, demanding allegiance to a specific side rather than fostering broad acceptance or spiritual integration.17, 18, 19
A Desire for Faith
When social anxieties intersect with waning religious practices, a spiritual void emerges, which faith, in its deepest sense, functions to fill. Paul Tillich described faith as the recognition of what is ultimately important in life, providing meaning and courage in the face of despair.20 Faith counters the secular demand to find fulfillment solely in the material present by offering a framework of ultimate value that extends beyond the empirical, fostering trust that reality holds order, purpose, and goodness beyond human comprehension. While it does not remove suffering, faith situates pain within a larger narrative of redemption or spiritual growth, offering hope, belonging, and the resources to endure the “unlivable self.” In this light, participation in alien beliefs can, in part, be interpreted as a search for a similarly powerful spiritual experience.
For Carl Jung, the emergence and widespread cultural interest in alien experiences and UFOs were a form of spiritual projection. He posited that this phenomenon arose from a collective longing for something transpersonal—a desire for meaning and connection beyond the material world—driven largely by the decline of traditional spiritual practice and the sociopolitical existential crisis in the West. Jung argued that, regardless of their physical reality, what UFOs primarily represent to people is the archetype of salvation or integration, serving as a potent symbol of hope that something external might save humanity from its own crises.
This powerful psychological need quickly spilled into the social sphere: By the early 1950s, the world saw the beginning of UFO religious communities, almost all of which were tied to the emerging New Age Movement.21 This established a distinct, if unconventional, religious community that has since expanded into a diverse landscape of cults, spiritual groups, and online movements. These modern mythologies offer their adherents not only an answer to the cosmic riddle but also a sense of belonging, a moral framework, and a promise of ultimate transformation—functions historically reserved for organized religion.
We are not just witnessing reports of the unexplained; we are witnessing the psychic temperature of a country—its anxieties, conspiratorial hunger, and collective imagination—made visible.
The world of UFOs deeply echoes religious communities, particularly in how the phenomenon inherently divides people into believers and nonbelievers, subsequently demanding an alignment with a collective ideology or community for those who accept the narrative. In particular, abduction narratives strongly resemble spiritual transformation stories, carrying powerful mythic, symbolic, and spiritual overtones that speak to a profound human need. These experiences often involve narratives of a calling, being chosen, initiation, and transformation, placing the individual in touch with a greater, transcendent, and mysterious unknowable power.22 In this way, both alien abduction and traditional spiritual experiences—such as deep prayer, apparitions, mystical visions, or spiritual possession—can be viewed as powerful modern myths. They serve as psychic containers for deeper psychological realities, suggesting they both function as potent cultural frameworks for expressing profound feelings of internal conflict, such as disconnection, trauma, or identity crisis, and a fundamental longing for transcendence or an escape from the confines of a prescribed self.
If participation in UFO belief systems satisfies a spiritual longing, what’s the harm? Perhaps none. However, when such belief requires individuals to suppress instinct, embodied perception, and common sense, the stakes shift. We risk creating tension with the fundamental architecture of evolutionary biology and psychology. To override these deeply ingrained perceptual systems in favor of a socially constructed narrative demands a significant cognitive sacrifice—one that erodes the innate trust in our instincts that has historically kept us alive. Over time, this override may dull the very intuition evolution shaped to help us discern reality from story.
We cannot expect young Americans to find faith in religious institutions, as many are still working to repair the trust of congregants they have long disenchanted. Yet faith—faith in something, anything—is essential to begin filling the emptiness left by a lack of meaning. Without faith in a larger cosmic order—be it a sense of karma, a belief in something greater, or a feeling of being loved or held by a transcendent whole—our younger generations are far more likely to attach to an ideology introduced to them on social media, which often leaves them unattached to an embodied instinctual reality.
Into this void step alien narratives.