Full text
| |
| Author(s): |
Leonardo Breno Martins
Total Authors: 1
|
| Document type: | Doctoral Thesis |
| Press: | São Paulo. |
| Institution: | Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Psicologia (IP/SBD) |
| Defense date: | 2015-10-02 |
| Examining board members: |
Wellington Zangari;
Silas Guerriero;
Geraldo Jose de Paiva;
Maria Luisa Sandoval Schmidt;
Altay Alves Lino de Souza
|
| Advisor: | Wellington Zangari |
| Abstract | |
This research intended to investigate psychological variables and processes underpinning beliefs and subjective experiences related to \"aliens\", \"UFOs\" and the \"paranormal\", with emphasis on those of immediate interest to social psychology. The main perspective to address the issue was ethnography, for it allows the close study of personally and culturally significant realities around the theme. The ethnographic incursions took place in urban and rural Brazilian contexts radically marked by such experiences and belief-meaning systems. They were Serra do Cipó and a group of \"contactees\" in Minas Gerais, a group of \"contactees\" in Mato Grosso do Sul, Serra do Roncador, in Mato Grosso, and the \"Brazilian UFO community\", featuring a multi-situated ethnography. The theme was chosen because of the previous finding that \"alien contacts\" compose one of the fewer investigated categories of anomalous experiences, especially in Brazil, but whose high prevalence and psychological connotations have superlative dimensions in contemporaneity, in addition to being a prime opportunity for understanding the last one. So, I compared the different contexts and discussed local and cross-cultural subjective dimensions related to anomalous beliefs and experiences that include \"aliens\". In addition, I discussed qualitatively some psychological dimensions of experiences attentively to particular and possibly cross-cultural aspects of them, proposing a theoretical synthesis at the end that complements my previous quantitative masters research on personality traits and mental health of protagonists of such episodes. The present research reached conclusions that underlie diverse subjects such as the primary feature of the direct experience, cognitive schemas, religious and spiritual dimensions, different forms of rationality, the crisis of meaning in the postmodernity, suggestibility, counter-intuition, identity, cognitive dissonance, among others that form a dynamic panorama of experiences and beliefs regarding \"aliens\" (AU) | |
| FAPESP's process: | 12/02884-0 - "The sky is falling": Post-modern psychological dynamics between the "supernatural" and the technological. |
| Grantee: | Leonardo Breno Martins |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate |