My background in Psychology—it being my major—began to show through this week during the research portion of my paper. I say this because while researching on my chosen topic of UFOs I began to look at it from more of a psychological view point. I believe that there are many answers to the question of what are UFOs, but I am just as certain that some of these answers can be provided to us from the field of psychology. To begin with I planned on not having a huge amount of material in my paper concerning psychology, but I decided that would not be true to my desire to write the best possible paper, nor would it be true to my actual beliefs. I suppose the only reason I wanted to leave it out, was because for many, it will take away credibility from the possible other answers to the question. I fear that readers will read possible solutions that seem rational, and stop there thinking process there. Although I believe most of the proposed rational solutions to UFOs are likely, I also believe that there is still a mystery left after applying these solutions.

I began by searching Academic Search Premier, PsycARTICLES, and the Research Starters databases for; UFO or abduction or alien, articles that were peer reviewed, and received 7160 results. At this point I narrowed my search to only include articles from the PsycARTICLES database, and struck gold in the form of Ghosts, UFOs, and Magic: Positive Affect and the Experiential System, which will undoubtedly be a valuable resource in my paper.

I also spent time this week trying to educate myself on what it takes for a source to be considered scholarly. I found a link for a nice little chart on the W233 research help page, which helped a little, when it comes to scholarly journals, but still left me scratching my head when it comes to books.