Opinion polls are widely employed nowadays to measure public attitudes on various important and trivial issues. It is natural therefore to apply the same method to a determination of public attitudes toward various phases of the UFO question.
Studies of this sort are not studies of the UFOs themselves, but an attempt at determination of what the American public thinks about UFOs. Some UFOs either do or do not come from outer space, and the fact of the matter would not be determined by finding out what the opinion of the American people about it may be. Nevertheless we considered that public attitudes do play a role in policy formation in America, and therefore it was appropriate to carry on some work in this area.
In 1947, 1950 and 1966 brief surveys of public attitudes on UFOs or flying saucers were conducted by the American Institute of Public Opinion, popularly known as the Gallup poll. Arrangements were made by the Colorado project for a more detailed study to be made during the spring of 1968. This was done for us by the Opinion Research Corporation. Findings of the earlier studies and of the study made for us are presented in Chapter 7 of Section III.
The first two studies indicated respectively that 90% and 94% of the American adult public had heard of flying saucers. The first of these results, taken within months of the original June 1947 sightings at Mt. Rainier indicates the extraordinary interest which the subject aroused from the outset. The 1966 survey indicated that 96% of the adult public had heard of flying saucers.
In the 1966 poll people were asked, : Have you, yourself, ever seen anything you thought was a 'flying saucer'?
The result was that 5% of the 96% who had heard of them answered yes to this question. The sample was designed to be representative of the American population, 21 years of age and older, of whom there are some 100 million. This is the basis of the oft-quoted statistic that five million Americans have said that they think they have seen a flying saucer.
In the same 1966 poll, 48% said they thought the things called flying saucers were "something real," and 31% said that they were "just peoples imagination." The question does not distinguish between various kinds of "real" things, such as weather balloons, aircraft, planets, mirages, etc., so the result by no means indicated that 48% believe they are visitors from outer space. That question was not included in the 1966 poll.
The 1966 poll asked whether the person interviewed thinks "there are people somewhat like ourselves living on other planets in the universe?" The question thus bears solely on ILE, not on whether such intelligences do in fact visit the Earth. Of the 1,575 interviewed 34% thought yes, 45% thought no, and 21% had no opinion.
There were no statistically significant regional differences between East, Midwest, South and West with regard to the proportion of the population which had heard of, had seen, or believed in the reality of flying saucers. However, as to belief in ILE, the existence of people on other planets, this belief was held by only 27 % of southerners, as compared with 36 % of easterners, 37 % of midwesterners and 36 % of westerners. The lower proportion of southerners who believe in ILE is statistically significant, that is, outside the range of chance variation due to finite size of sample. Although statistically significant, it is causally unexplained.
Significant variation with age is shown in responses to belief in the reality of flying saucers, and to belief in intelligent life on other planets. About 50 % of persons under 60 believe in the reality of flying saucers as compared with about 33 % of persons over 60. On the other hand, a significantly smaller proportion of those under 50 believe in ILE, than do those over 50. On both of these points, the decline in the number of "believers" among older people is mostly due to the increase of those having "no opinion" rather than to an increase of the number of "non-believers." Here again the poll gives no basis for conclusions as to the reasons for these differences.
Quand à la dépendance au sexe, 22 % des hommes ou femmes n'ont pas d'opinion quant à la "réalité" des soucoupes volantes. Significantly more women than men believe in their reality:
| % Réel | % Imaginaire | |
|---|---|---|
| Hommes | 43 | 35 |
| Femmes | 52 | 26 |
The poll showed that increased amount of formal education is associated with an increased tendency to believe in the reality of flying saucers. Perhaps this result says something about how the school system trains students in critical thinking.
An interesting correlation is found between tendency to believe in UFO reality, and to believe in ILE with having had a personal experience of having seen an UFO. The results are:
| % pensant que les ovnis sont réels | % croyant à la VIA | |
|---|---|---|
| Témoins | 76 | 51 |
| Non-témoins | 46 | 34 |
Comme précédemment, les relations causales ne sont pas explorées ; nous ne savons pas si voir c'est croire, ou si croire c'est voir.
Dans l'étude de 1968 menée par le projet du Colorado par l'Opinion Research Corporation, 2050 adultes âgés de plus de 17 ans, vivant dans des households privées dans les Etats-Unis continentaux furent interrogés. In addition teenagers in the same household with an adult who was interviewed were also interviewed to give a sample of their views. Separate studies of opinions held by college students were conducted. These are reported in section 3, chapitre 7.
Dans l'étude de 1968, 3 % des adultes répondirent affirmativement à Avez-vous,
vous-même, déjà vu un ovni ?
Ceci parallels les 5 % qui avaient répondu par l'affirmative dans le sondage Gallup
de 1966 à la question similaire : Avez-vous déjà vu quoi que ce soit dont
vous avez pensé qu'il s'agissait d'une "soucoupe volante" ?
On pourrait penser que le nombre plus petit en 1968 pouvait être expliqué par peut-être une moindre familiarité du public avec le
terme OVNI qu'avec le terme de soucoupe volante. Ceci semble difficilement probable, cependant, in that the question
was part of a total interview in which the meaning of the term UFO would have become clear from the general context of
other questions in the interview. It seems to us therefore that this poll actually indicated a smaller percentage of
sighters than the earlier one.
An important finding is that 87 % of those who said that they had seen an UFO, also declared that they had reported it to no one, other than to family or friends, that is, to no one by which it would have received official attention. Thus only about one-eighth of sightings were reported anywhere, and not all of these were reported to the Air Force. Hence if all sightings were reported to the Air Force, this result indicates that the number of reports received would be more than eight times as many as are now being received. From the small fraction who did report to the Air Force, it seems a fair inference that most of these non-reporting sighters did not think that what they saw constituted a security hazard.
In contrast, 56% of the non-sighters declared that they would report it to the police if they saw an UFO. We find this rather large discrepancy between the promised reporting behavior of the non-sighters and the actual reporting behavior of the sighters quite puzzling.