Why do people claim to have been abducted by aliens?

Why do people claim to have been abducted by aliens?

Chris French (Anomalistic Psychologist) gives expert video advice on: Why do people believe in the paranormal?; Do most people believe in the paranormal?; How important are people's paranormal beliefs to them? and more...

When it comes to people who think they have actually been abducted by aliens, and taken on board space craft, and been medically examined, and all this kind of "X-Files" stuff, then I will be more interested in a more physiological point of view. There are a number of different factors that are involved. Very often the roots of this belief seem to be in an episode of sleep paralysis, where people have hallucinated something happening to them in their bed room. They may well in search of an explanation for this, have gone to see a hypnotist who specializes in hypnotic regression, already thinking they might have been abducted by aliens. And then when they go through this procedure, they end up with detailed memories of having been abducted by aliens, but these are false memories. They are not memories of something that really happened. They are memories based on belief, fantasy, expectation, and so on.