The UFOs of October:

The Autokinetic Effect and
group dynamics in UFO observations

Michael D. Sofka

This is the outline of a talk presented to The Inquiring Skeptics of Upper New York, February 3, 1999; The Syracuse Technology Club, May 11, 1999; to the Albany Area Amateur Astronomers, November 16, 1999; and, The Central New York Skeptics, September 20, 2006. Slides and notes available in PDF.

Thank you to Taner Edis, Alan French, Eric Krieg, Bob Mulford and Gary Schwartz for their feedback and suggestions.

Introduction

My talk today is about the perceptual effects that lead many sane, sober people to believe they saw something unusual in the sky. These are the ``lights in the sky'' reports. The sightings which result in calls to the airport or planetarium.

In the interests of full disclosure, I personally don't believe UFOs are alien space craft. But, a lot of people, as many as 11% according to some polls, believe they have seen something unusual in the sky, which they identify as a UFO. If these people are not delusional, or impaired, then what did they see? That is the question I will be answering, at least in part, in this talk. I am specifically going to discuss the autokinetic effect and other illusions of motion that contribute to most, if not all, UFO reports. I'll also be talking briefly about the effects of expectation on perception and recall. The message to take home is that ordinary people can see something unfamiliar in the sky, and interpret it in ways consistent with what they expect of UFOs, even though in reality they saw nothing unusual or abnormal.

I won't be talking about Alien Abductions, Fox Autopsy films, Crashed Flying Saucers, Cattle Mutilations, UFO cults or any of the more exotic UFO-related claims. I also won't be talking about hoaxes, although there have been some famous UFO hoaxes. And, I won't be covering the history of UFOs, even though I find that topic to be fascinating in its own way.

Any of these other topics could be the source of many other talks. But, I'm going to stick to your basic bread and butter ``lights in the sky,'' which still make up the majority of UFO reports, and are the foundation of the pyramid of UFO claims. That is, if there were no underlying real phenomena---the illusions of motion---there would be many fewer reports of ``lights in the sky,'' and they would not have the same degree of credibility. Without that base, hoaxed UFO photos, and claims about finding a landing site, or talking with occupants would be less believable.

To tie the talk to a particular, ``real,'' event, let me read to you from an October, 1994 Albany Times Union article entitled: ``Twinkle twinkle little starmen?''

Clairmont Road residents were drawn outside Friday night by red and green blinking lights in the sky....
``A whole bunch of people witnessed this, including a member of the Stillwater Police Department,'' said Ray Cecot of Niskayuna, section director of the Mutual UFO Network. ``I have multiple witnesses all saying the same thing. Nobody was drinking; there were no drugs around.''
The lights were first seen at about 8 pm by a woman and her daughter, who won't speak to the press. About seven neighbors came out to watch,....

And, the report goes on to elaborate that there were up to a dozen saucer shaped objects the size of a dime held at arms length. Think about that for a minute, 12 objects the size of a dime held at arms length. How big is that? If you held a dime at arms length, how would it compare in size to the full moon?

Two television news stations even showed up, and filmed the object---the film crew saw only one---the next day, which provided an inadvertent, but very important, clue.

Skeptics and UFOs (Disclaimer I).

Before discussing the UFOs of October, a little background is in order: background on illusions of motion, on group dynamics and, most importantly background on Skeptics.

Skeptics attempt to apply science and rational methods to claims of the paranormal and fringe science. They work within established scientific framework, although some creativity may be necessary to apply science to such bizarre areas as UFOs, bigfoot sightings, and so on.

I contrast this ``scientific skepticism'' with ``philosophical skepticism,'' which takes more of a doubting Thomas approach to claims. The philosophical skeptic is likely to doubt anything they don't see themselves, or at least strive for complete consistency in all aspects of belief. I'm more concerned with what science can tell us, and leave the non-scientific alone.

For example, since it is believed likely that there are some extraterrestrial intelligences, and since they may exceed our technology by millions (even billions) of years, we cannot dismiss out of hand the claim that some UFOs are of extraterrestrial origin.1 But:

If that is the case we should be able to find some positive evidence that UFOs are not of this earth--such as a piece of metal whose isotope ratio is different from that of the earth metals (and, preferably, different from that of meteoric iron and nickel).
Negative evidence---for example, a blanket claim that we can't explain with 100% certainty what Mrs. McDonald saw on the night of September 1st, is not evidence that UFOs are extraterrestrial, or even something unusual. It is only evidence that Mrs. McDonald saw something she was unfamiliar with or could not identify under the circumstances.
Most UFOs can be identified, or they have good competing explanations, such advertising airplanes, satellites, weather balloons, or celestial objects enhanced by common but misunderstood perceptual illusions. A skeptical investigator strives for this type of explanation---it has a far greater probability of being correct. A good investigator (skeptical or not) attempts to use science to eliminate the normal---if only to highlight the better claims.

I want to emphasize: it cannot be claimed with 100% certainty that the effects I'll be talking about are the explanation for any particular event. But:

They are good and simple theories, which should be considered before jumping to more complicated explanations.
They are frequently overlooked explanations---particularly by those who believe they have seen a UFO, or those who want to believe UFOs are spacecraft.
They are frequently misunderstood even by those who do not believe UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft, and are instead invoked in a form of hand waving.2

With those preliminaries out of the way, lets get to some science.

What is the Autokinetic Effect?

I've already mentioned the autokinetic effect, and it is in the title of the talk. What is the autokinetic effect?

The Autokinetic effect is a perceptual illusion in which motion is perceived in an object that is really stationary. It is an illusion of motion---and a very common one.

It is most often perceived when a small bright object is seen against a dark background, such as a keyhole in a dark room 3, or a bright star against the evening sky.4

It is caused by small eye-movements. Our eyes are constantly moving, the brain compensates for this movement to create a stable image. When compensating, the brain is using prior knowledge of background---that is, knowledge of what does and does not move.

Against an ``impoverished'' background, however, the brain mistakes the eye's movement for object movement. Once your brain has made the ``decision'' that the object is moving, the effect is persistent and very realistic.

The autokinetic effect is robust:

Everybody will see it under the right conditions, and the right conditions are easy to find. The Early evening sky is an ideal condition.
It has been replicated in laboratories literally thousands of times as part of experiments on perception, and group dynamics (which I'll talk about shortly).

A good time to see it is right now [January 1999] in the early evening:

Jupiter is high in the southwest at sunset.
Look for it about 5:30--6:30, as it gets dark, but before all the stars are visible.
Just stare at it for a couple of minutes, choosing a vantage point that provides little background. (For example, not through the limbs of a tree). Eventually, Jupiter will appear to move.

Once the illusion of motion has set in, it is difficult to ignore; even if you know the object is stationary, it appears to move.

To those who do not know what is happening, it is very difficult to convince them their eye, and not the object is moving.

Muzafer Sherif's study.

The autokinetic effect is also subject to suggestion. That is, you can suggest to people what ``motion'' the light is making. Multiple people can also make suggestions to each other about what they see without realizing what they are doing. When this happens, the autokinetic effect becomes an unintentional Ouija board.

In 1931, Muzafer Sherif, a social psychologist, used the autokinetic effect to study the formation of group norms.5 Group norms are accepted beliefs or behaviors in a group of people. For example, how close should you stand to another person during a face-to-face conversation.6

In Sherif's study:

Subjects were placed individually in a darkened room with a single light source on the opposite wall. They were asked to record how far the light moved. Note, the light did not move, it was solidly fastened to the wall! So, what the subjects were really recording is how far they perceived the light be moving due to the autokinetic effect.
By themselves, the subjects soon settled on individual estimations of movement, ranging from a couple of inches to about 8 inches.
When the subjects were then put in a room together, and encouraged to report their estimates out-loud, Sherif found that their estimates at first differed, but soon converged on an common value. But, the value was not necessarily the arithmetic mean. A single subject's value often dominated or exerted disproportional influence.
Finally, when the subjects were separated, they maintained the group estimate for light movement.
By running this experiment, Muzafer Sherif inadvertently ran the first controlled experimental study of UFO observation 16 years before the first UFO was spotted by pilot Kenneth Arnold.

Sherif's results are also robust, and have been replicated in hundreds of subsequent studies of group dynamics. It turns out to be trivially easy to influence what movement the light is reported to take, and groups of subjects always come to some agreement on what they are seeing. For example:

A confederate (somebody working with the experimenter) can influence the perceived distance and direction of movement.
Exaggerated distance norms can be established (e.g., if most subjects perceive 6-10 inches, a confederate can establish a norm of 15 inches.
Group norms persist over ``generations'' of subjects, as each is replaced by a new group member. The exaggerated norms typically persist for 5--7 generations, before reverting to a non-exaggerated value.7

Other Perceptual Effects.

The autokinetic effect is not the only illusion of motion that has a role in UFO reports. For example, there is also:

Autostatic Effect: Similar to the autokinetic effect, the autostatic effect is when a moving object appears stationary. This can happen, for example, when watching a satellite traverse the sky. Many people do not realize that you can see satellites with the naked eye, and they are another suspected source of UFOs---one which is difficult to track down since orbital data for satellites can be difficult to come by (some is classified). [This is changing, however, as more programs for calculating orbits based on observation become available via the Internet. There are also active satellite watchers, and web sites with links to orbital information. See http://www.satobs.org/satintro.html and ftp://kilroy.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/space/elements/satelem/. --mds 29 September 1999, thanks to Allen Thompson for bringing these web sites to my attention.]

Stroboscopic Effect: lights blinking in sequence create an illusion of motion---for example, stars being seen through wispy clouds.

Induced movement: An object may be perceived to move when it is the background that is really moving. We are all familiar with this from sitting in a car, and jamming on the brakes in panic when we think the car is moving backwards, only to discover that it was the car in front moving forward. This also happens when we watch the moon or a star ``racing'' through clouds on a windy night.

Moon or star chasing: The moon and stars are so distant, that they do not change position against the background when we move. This creates the illusion that they are following us. If that is combined with some other event, such as a fireball, or if it occurs when a person is nervous or tired, a UFO encounter may be in the making.

Brightness/Size/Distance constancy: In the absence of other cues a brighter object is perceived as being larger and closer than a dimmer object. In the case of stars, they are all the same size to the naked eye---they are all point sources. Yet, the brighter stars are perceived and remembered as being ``bigger.'' (An amateur astronomer friend remarked that people will ask him about the star that was ``as big as a house.'')

Atmospheric shimmering: can make a steady object appear unsteady, and can cause a prismatic effect so that a white object may appear to change colors. This often creates an illusion of rotation, as colors shift (similar to the stroboscopic effect).

It should be noted that training does not make these effects go away. At most, training can alert people to when they may experience an illusion of motion or perception, and take action (such as viewing the ``UFO'' through tree limbs) to eliminate or adjust for it. Or, when they should temper or compensate their answers for such effects.

It should be specifically noted that pilots and military personnel do not get special training in how to ignore optical illusions, or how to observe the night sky. Quite the contrary, more advanced pilot training includes ignoring sensory feelings and believing instruments. Our senses can lie, we must trust our instruments. As such, reports of UFOs by pilots are as accurate or inaccurate as those of non-pilots under the same conditions.

Memory.

Memory of a UFO observation are also influenced by recall effects. What a person recalls seeing is influenced by what they believe they have seen---especially in an ambiguous and emotionally charged event such as a crime, or observing a UFO.

Elizabeth Loftus and her students:8

Showed people a movie of an auto accident.
Asked them how fast the car was going when it ran the stop sign. But, there was no stop sign---it was a yield sign.
Regardless, most subjects later recalled a stop sign they didn't see.
Also, their estimates of how fast the car was traveling when it ran the non-existent stop sign varied with how the question was asked. So, if the question implied a high speed, the estimates were higher. Loftus calls this a ``leading question.''

It is important to keep in mind that:

Most UFO observations are not due to a single effect, and instead involve a collection of perceptual illusions which our brains tie together into a narrative consistent with what we believe we saw.

A sighting may start by looking at a very bright ``star,'' and through a combination of perceptual illusions and leading questions (from other group members, or from investigators) ends with reports of dime sized saucers. It is important to remember that both perception and recall are active events influenced by what we believe we are/were looking at.

The Autokinetic Effect in Practice.

Ok, we know the autokinetic effect, and other illusions of motion, exist. And, we know that group dynamics can greatly influence the illusion, and the consistency of their reports. What evidence is there that this has ever happened with ``real'' UFOs?

The Exeter, New Hampshire UFOs.

In the fall of 1965 in Exeter, NH, multiple people reported UFOs that followed their car from the beach, or were visible from their back porch. The UFOs were reported to move, rotate, etc. This went on for three months.
This was widely reported in the newspapers, getting more people to look, and was written about in the book Incident at Exeter, by John G. Fuller.9
Robert Sheaffer plotted times of sighting, as given in Fuller's book, with the setting times of Jupiter. He found a total of 7 observations that provided enough information to tell such basics as the direction in the sky, and day of the year. These 7 observations, however, were a good fit.10.
If the UFO was not Jupiter, then we might expect at least some of the Exeter UFO witnesses to give the location of the UFO in relation to Jupiter. That is, Jupiter was bright and visible. So, where was Jupiter in relation to other bright and visible object?

The Mexico City UFOs.

July 11th, 1991, Mexico City, a total eclipse of the sun visible at noon with the sun near zenith.
Thousands of people watch as the eclipse approaches totality.
Hundreds, thousands? More, depending on who you ask, see a UFO zipping around. The UFO is captured on hand held camcorders, and form the basis for a later documentary.11
But, if you wanted to know what people saw, instead of watching the documentary I would suggest the July 1991 Sky&Telescope. On page 89 is a map of the major celestial object visible during the eclipse. This includes; the planets Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Mercury, and the stars Regulus, Sirius, Betelgeuse and Rigel---all except for Mars brighter than magnitude 1 objects---that is, objects as bright as the brightest stars typically visible.
Quoting John Bortal of the Brooks Observatory, page 91 ``Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter site well above the horizon during totality.... At magnitude -5 [about 25 times brighter than Sirius], Venus should be evident to the naked eye long before the onset of totality.''
If a UFO was recorded in Mexico City during the July 1991 eclipse, I would like to know its position relative to these stars and planets, and particularly in relation to Venus.
The Mexico City event, however, has spark a long-lasting wave of UFO reports from Mexico, which seems to have borrowed most of its major elements form US UFOlogists.

The 1993 Perseid Meteor Shower, Bartlett, New Hampshire.

This final story is one of a personal nature.

In 1993, I was vacationing in Bartlett, NH with my wife, father, step mother and family. This was in August, so I had the entire crew out, just before sunset, to watch the Perseid Meteor Shower.
After we were lying on our backs for a few minutes, watching the sky, my father points to a bright object and says: ``that star is moving!''
Now, I'm an ethical person and a skeptic to boot, so I said: ``No it's not, that's Vega, and you're just experiencing the autokinetic effect.''
After a couple of minutes pause, my father responds: ``Dammit, that star is moving, I can see it.''

There was a fair sized crowd observing at that time, many were looking at us, and at Vega. They looked back and forth---I looked at them, and my father, and they looked back. The temptation was very strong to say: ``you're right, it's moving to the left---look at it!'' (all in the interest of Science, you understand). Never before was I so upset about being an ethical skeptic.

The autokinetic illusion, once it starts, is very strong. Knowing the object isn't moving, doesn't make it go away.

The UFOs of October.

I started off by reading from the Albany Times Union, about UFOs seen over Stillwater NY. I hope by now you have a better understanding of the kinds of effects that may have lead to those reports.

What other evidence is there that the Stillwater UFO was a bright planet or star?

At that time Arcturus and Capella (the second and third brightest stars visible from Albany), were in the northwest and northeast, and Venus and Jupiter were both visible, and very bright in the southeast.
I first heard about the UFOs, was on the local news station, WRGB Channel 6. The people being interviewed said the lights were moving around the sky.
The WRGB report included video footage of the object witnesses said was the moving UFO. It showed a bright image of a star or planet, rock steady in the tripod mounted camera image. The weather came on immediately afterwards, and the meteorologist (who is also an amateur astronomer) instantly said ``That was Venus you showed.'' It was a gem of TV news moments.
However, if WTEN Channel 10's meteorologist had a theory, he was quiet about it after they showed the same rock-steady video image from a tripod mounted camera. Not surprisingly, since their anchor had just finished saying ``while driving home I saw something very bright---brighter than a star---on the horizon.''
In later follow-up, not printed in the news or covered on TV, Ray Cecot found that in the weeks following the first report many people were mistaking stars for something unusual!12

A year later, I saw Ray Cecot give a presentation at a local MUFON gathering:

He said, that when he got to Stillwater at 11 pm that first night (remember, the original report was at 8 pm) the people gathered pointed at stars when asked where the UFO was.
But, Ray said he could not explain what they saw earlier, and thinks it may have been something unusual.

Call me skeptical, even cynical, but at 11 pm the eyewitnesses to the Stillwater UFOs demonstrated in no uncertain terms that they could not tell the difference between an interstellar spacecraft, and a bright star. Why should I believe they had that ability at 8 pm?

What about the ``dime sized objects?'' How do we go from stars, to a dozen dimes? It is important to note that people are very poor at judging size and distance without good visual cues:

If we know the size, we can judge (or calculate) the distance.
If we know the distance (for example, if it is in front of a hill, not above it, but in front) we can judge it's size or calculate it's maximum size.
But if we know neither of these two values, we cannot judge either of them.
And in the absence of more information, a brighter object will be perceived and remembered as being bigger than a dimmer object.

I had asked you earlier how you thought a dime measured against the size of the full moon. If you held a dime at arms length, how big would it appear if held up against the moon? Think about this again, before reading further.

Would the moon be larger than the dime? 10 times larger than the dime? Would it be 100 times larger then the dime? This is the largest estimate I've heard so far.
In actuality, the dime would be 4 times the area of the full moon (larger if your arms are shorter than about 22 inches). A typical frozen pea, held at arms length, is about the size of the full moon.
What would a dozen objects, each appearing 4 times the size of the full moon look like? I would expect 911 lines to be ringing off the hook.
I suspect what happened (this is a guess, I of course cannot know---I wasn't there and enough data has not been offered), is that in the excitement a plane or two were confused with the original object. Or, over the course of observation, the witnesses lost sight of the original object, and picked up on others, perhaps a fireball or a satellite.
When asked about the objects' size, they answer what they believe to be the honest truth, that it was bigger than a star---perhaps the size of a dime---without realizing just how big that is.
What we do know is that according to the local MUFON director at that time, by 11 o'clock that night they were looking at stars.
And, we do know that by the following evening, the same people were looking at a bright celestial object, as shown by the steady image in the tripod mounted television news cameras.

Summary and Conclusions (Disclaimer II).

I started this talk with a disclaimer and I will end with a disclaimer.

The truth be told, neither I nor anybody else knows what the unnamed women, her daughter and seven neighbors saw at 8 pm from Stillwater NY. It could have been a distant jet, a bright star seen through clear, cooling skies (the observing conditions at the time). The star or planet could have been augmented by the autokinetic effect (as seemed evident from the network news report), or some combination of these and other factors.

And who knows, it could have been an interstellar craft. The evidence, however, hardly supports such an extraordinary hypothesis---especially when simple, alternative explanations, employing well-understood phenomena, are available.

The Stillwater event, however, when combined with the media coverage, spun off its own mini-wave of UFO reports. It was not as big or dramatic as the current Mexican wave, to be sure. But like the Mexican wave, the stories have became more elaborate with time. Attendance at student sponsored UFO symposium at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute was high. (Although, it is interesting to note, very few of the attendees were students.) And, this included the usual collection of drawings of UFOs, pictures of crop circles, support groups for abduction victims, etc.

Most of these people, no doubt, were already believers and all the local flap did was give them a booster shot. However, many people within the WRGB and WTEN listening areas now know that something, maybe an alien spacecraft, was seen in Stillwater, since no additional followup was offered in newspapers or on TV. The evidence, however, simply doesn't support this claim.

Instead, the evidence is consistent with misperception of celestial objects, augmented by the autokinetic effect and possibly other illusions of motion and recall. It is possible for ordinary people to see something unfamiliar, and even exciting and extraordinary, in the night sky. That doesn't mean what they saw is inexplicable, or even unusual. On the contrary, it may be the familiar night sky, viewed by people not so familiar with it, augmented by some popular images of flying saucers and aliens.

1 E.g., the Fermi paradox. That is, a civilization that advanced should have contacted us by now. For a good review of the Fermi paradox see Zuckerman, B. and Hart, M.H., Extraterrestrials: Where are They?, Second edition, Cambridge University Press, 1982/1985, and Dick, S.J., The Biological Universe: The Twentieth-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate and the Limits of Science, Cambridge University Press, 1996.

2 Which damages credibly, IMHO

3 Hence, it is also called the ``keyhole'' illusion.

4 Goldstein, E.B., Sensation and Perception, Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1980, pp. 265--266 (or any introductory perception book), George, L., Alternate Realities: The Paranormal, The Mystic and the Transcendent in Human Experience, Facts On File, 1995, p. 27.

5 (Sherif, M., A study of some social factors in perception, Archives of Psychology, 27, pp. 311--328, 1935). Sherif, M., An experimental approach to the study of attitudes, Sociometry, 1, 1937, pp. 90-98.

6 Sherif was Turkish, and he noticed people kept moving away from him as he talked.

7 A thorough summary of the autokinetic literature in social psychology can be found in Carolyn Wood Sherif, Orientation in Social Psychology, Harper & Row, New York, 1976. George, Alternate Realities, contains entries for autokinetic effect, and for group dynamics of unusual experiences.

8 Elizabeth Loftus' early work on memory and recall is summarized in: Loftus, E.F., Eyewitness Testimony, Harvard University Press, 1979. Information about reconstructive recall in a variety of natural settings is in Neisser, U., Memory Observed: Remembering in Natural Context, W.H. Freeman and Company, 1892.

9 Fuller, J.G., Incident at Exeter, Putnam, 1966; paperback, Berkeley, 1974.

10 Sheaffer, R.. The UFO Verdict: Examining The Evidence, Prometheus, 1986, pp. 111--119. The fit was not statistically significant, nor could it be with such a small sample size. Sheaffer discusses other evidence that the Exeter UFOs were celestial bodies, such as a correlation with cloud cover, regular nightly appearances that shift according to sidereal time, and descriptions of the object consistent with celestial bodies known to be visible at that time.

It is interesting to note that in the definitive work supporting one of the best documented UFO cases, only 7 observations out of nearly 100 occurring over 5 months were written up with enough accuracy to tell both approximate direction and date of observation.

11 Elders, Lee., and Jaime Maussan, Messengers of Destiny, Genesis III Productions, narrated by Brit and Lee Elders.

12 French, A. The Why-Files, December 1994.