Case file No. 03 · Experiences and methods
A self-assessment questionnaire and attention tests, such as the Stroop test, can show whether a person has been abducted by aliens.
These tests measure traits, not events.
No test has been shown to detect an abduction. Questionnaires and attention tests can show how a person thinks and remembers, and abduction reports go with some traits such as vivid imagination. They cannot show what happened to the person.
Some groups offer self-assessment questionnaires and use attention tests such as the Stroop test to decide who is an “abductee”. The Stroop test, published in 1935, measures how much a person's attention is disturbed when a colour word is printed in a different ink [1]. It was designed to study attention, not to detect events. Researchers who compared people reporting abductions with other groups found differences in traits, such as a tendency to absorb into fantasy and to form false memories [2]. Those differences describe the person. They do not show that an abduction happened. We found no study showing that any test can tell a real abduction from a vivid sleep experience [5].
Claims that supporters often repeat and that we looked for but could not confirm in a reliable source.
To show that a test detects abductions, researchers would need a group of people known to have been abducted and a group known not to have been, and would then show that the test separates them. No such group has ever been identified, so the test cannot be checked [5].
In 1949 the psychologist Bertram Forer gave his students a personality test and then handed each of them the same text as their “result”. They rated it highly accurate for themselves [3]. A questionnaire that tells you that you may be an abductee works the same way if it matches common experiences, such as vivid dreams or night waking.
In a Stroop test, people name the ink colour of words that spell other colours, for example the word red printed in blue. The test measures how much automatic reading interferes with naming colours [1]. It is used to study attention. It says nothing about what happened to a person in the past.
Studies find that people reporting abductions are more likely to have had sleep paralysis, to be prone to fantasy and to form false memories [2][4]. These traits make such experiences more likely and the memories more convincing. They explain why a test can separate the groups without any abduction taking place.
Whether a questionnaire could reliably identify people who have intense, frightening sleep experiences, and so help them find support, is a fair research question [4]. A test that detects abduction events is not.
If a test says that you may be an “abductee”, treat it as a questionnaire result, not a diagnosis. If you have frightening experiences at night, a doctor or sleep specialist can help [4]. Be careful with any group that asks for money or promises to remove the “problem”.
15 November 2026: First publication. Verdict: No evidence.