Actually, I just made that term up. We people of the world are spending billions of dollars seeking extra terrestrial life without one shred of evidence that such life actually exists. We so passionately desire to find life out there that we don't have to have proof that it even exists.
It seems to me that as we want something more, we demand less evidence of that something even existing. This is human nature, I think, and it is not unreasonable. Is there an already-in-existence term in psychology that refers to this aspect of human nature?
2007-06-04 00:14:54 · 4 answers · asked by Matthew T 7 in Social Science ➔ Psychology
it's called hope
2007-06-04 00:26:18 · answer #1 · answered by antsam999 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Dude, I have no idea what the official name is you're looking for, but western science is littered with such searches.
It used to be alchemy in the middle ages - lead into gold and eternal life.
The detractors set out to prove that something isn't so, whilst the believers set out to prove it is so. In the case of ET, it's the believers who are doing the spending.
I'd call it obsession with being proved right, powered at an identity level - i.e. when you question the existence of ET with an obsessive, you're calling into question their existence too.
2007-06-04 07:35:20 · answer #2 · answered by Dogstarrr 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
denial in a general term - denying the evidence to the contrary of what you want.
obsessive-compulsive in a more specific term, perhaps...
but neither of those terms may be specifically what you are looking for. you might check out the DSM manual - book on diagnoses...
2007-06-05 04:13:43 · answer #3 · answered by singinheart3 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
dissatisfaction with what we've got
2007-06-04 07:18:43 · answer #4 · answered by Moose 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋