Why more and more people believe in aliens

Belief in aliens is nothing new – reports of UFOs can be found in fourth-century Chinese texts – but over the last few years, there has been a sharp increase in the numbers who truly think the truth is out there. 

In fact, reported Newsweek, the idea is gaining "unprecedented traction" in the US and elsewhere, leading to concerns about the impact it could have. 

In the late 1990s, only 20% of people in the US believed UFO sightings were proof of alien life, said the magazine. That had risen to 34% by 2022, at which time 24% of 1,000 Americans polled also said they had seen a flying saucer. 

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Heading for the White House?

Tony Milligan, a senior research fellow at King's College London, told Newsweek the rise was a "political tsunami" that had even caught the attention of US politicians. 

"You don't worry about this stuff when it's 2% of the population... but you don't expect it to be reaching the floor of Congress," he said.

Depending on the results of November's presidential elections, the topic could go even further, as Donald Trump has vowed to declassify videos of alleged UFOs if he wins. The Republican nominee has had a "decade-long fascination" with the topic, said The Sun. 

The UK is not immune to the growth, Milligan wrote in The Conversation, with around 20% of citizens believing extraterrestrials have visited and an estimated 7% saying they have seen a UFO. 

It is a "slightly paradoxical" belief, he said. Not only is there no proof in the existence of aliens, but the immense distance between star systems means it is more likely that any evidence would come from signals. 

Milligan put the growth in the belief down to "familiar anti-elite tropes": the idea that people in positions of power are hiding the "truth". Indeed, he added, belief in a cover-up is more popular than the belief that aliens had come to Earth, with a "staggering" 68% of Americans telling a 2019 survey that the US government hadn't revealed all it knew. 

Memory tricks

Psychologist Chris French, meanwhile, told the BBC's Sky at Night magazine that the growth in ufology was something new, and that in 1947 – a "golden year" for sightings following the Roswell incident – a UFO was not automatically linked with alien life.  

"Yet now, it would be the automatic go-to explanation for many people," he said, even though ufologists themselves knew that the vast majority of sightings had a "mundane explanation". People liked the more exciting explanation, he added. 

French also argued that other UFO-related experiences, such as alien abduction, could be episodes of sleep paralysis that victims are later told was an extraterrestrial event they can't remember because the alien "wiped your memory". As for group cases of UFO sightings, he cited "memory conformity", where the group discuss what they think they've seen and by doing so, influence each other's recollections. 

There is one other reason why more people believe in aliens and UFOs: the rise of social media, said Professor Barry Markovsky of the University of South Carolina, also writing in The Conversation. 

Mobile phone images of "nondescript lights in the sky" can quickly go viral, adding to the interest that already exists and encouraging other people to share their own photos of "odd-looking content".

Belief in aliens is a trend that grows and fades, he added, but, "like political scandals and high-waisted jeans", it will never go away.