The other side of the coin

[hiflier]

15 minutes ago, vinchyfoot said:

Not every report is valid so there's another area of study:

 

Desire to believe?

Misidentification  based on sensory limitations of the human animal

 

etc.

 

The "etc." part meaning to include the desire/need to hoax the community?

[vinchyfoot]

30 minutes ago, hiflier said:

 

The "etc." part meaning to include the desire/need to hoax the community?

 

Hoaxing leads to a subcategory that could break down by motivation for the hoaxing

One could throw in the ways the subject is being exploited by various forces

The internal make up of the Community itself would make for an interesting area of study

[Huntster]

1 hour ago, hiflier said:

 

If one is fearful of being labeled a crackpot and therefore as somehow flawed, or "teched" by their community then it could be considered psychological. But not because there's something wrong, weak, or dysfunctional or missing in that person. No one likes ridicule.

 

Social psychology. 

[Huntster]

1 hour ago, vinchyfoot said:

........but if the creature is never discovered it still is a valid study of what got so many to think they saw something, there's more than just folklore involved, I suspect.

 

And if discovery DOES occur, will there be any study on how many people saw a sasquatch, but convinced themselves that they actually saw a bear because sasquatches didn't exist? Or that the thought of sasquatches existing was too terrifying to accept? Dr. D.W. Grieve actually admitted that upon examination of the PG film in 1971.

[Huntster]

1 hour ago, hiflier said:

 

The "etc." part meaning to include the desire/need to hoax the community?

 

So what is the psychological basis for a need to hoax others?

[vinchyfoot]

1 hour ago, Huntster said:

 

So what is the psychological basis for a need to hoax others?

 

Mischief, profit, need for attention.... likely to name a few

[Huntster]

18 minutes ago, vinchyfoot said:

 

Mischief, profit, need for attention.... likely to name a few

 

Profit, and probably several others, aren't psychological issues. A need for attention is lacking in yet others where the reporter wants anonymity. 

[Wooly Booger]

3 hours ago, vinchyfoot said:

 

The OP is predicated on an "IF", so no it doesn't. The premise, popular or not is literally that of a coin, which has two sides:

 

1) If the creature exists > tracks, DNA, etc   > eventual dead or live baseline specimen

2) If it doesn't > perfectly valid study into the psychology of what made the belief so prevalent  > psychological study of that belief.

 

Not every report is valid so there's another area of study:

 

Desire to believe?

Misidentification  based on sensory limitations of the human animal

 

etc.

 

Not looking at all the angles is an incomplete study of the phenomenon

 

which is also part of greater puzzle but not the only part.

I agree with you. But IF the creature doesn't exist, then what would account for hundreds of years of Native American stories, reliable eyewitness reports, the Patterson-Gimlin Film, trackways deemed authentic by physical anthropologists, and

DNA evidence and hair samples determined to be of an unknown primate?

 

Both the quantity and quality of evidence suggests, at least to me, that it is far more unlikely that Bigfoot DOES NOT exist than that it does. 

[Patterson-Gimlin]

Interesting thread. Of course  the creatures don't exist in my opinion. 

A cool, but only one good film ,footprints distorted and or fake,DNA with human contamination does nothing for the case. The worst of all is human witnesses. 

Native folklore bound by religion and spiritualism can easily be dismissed. Such as American tribes and Sherpas. The evidence falls short and is not convincing at all without real proof. 

 

As someone said earlier. It makes for great campfire boogeyman  stories. 

 

[Wooly Booger]

2 hours ago, Patterson-Gimlin said:

Interesting thread. Of course  the creatures don't exist in my opinion. 

A cool, but only one good film ,footprints distorted and or fake,DNA with human contamination does nothing for the case. The worst of all is human witnesses. 

Native folklore bound by religion and spiritualism can easily be dismissed. Such as American tribes and Sherpas. The evidence falls short and is not convincing at all without real proof. 

 

As someone said earlier. It makes for great campfire boogeyman  stories. 

 

You make some valid points, but the evidence is much stronger than you seem to think. The Native Americans attributed the supernatural and their spiritual beliefs to every animal they were familiar with, including wolves, bear, deer, crows, turtles etc... That in no way can be used invalidate hundreds and potentially thousands of years worth of Native American legends of these creatures. 

 

I understand that eyewitnesses can be unreliable. But we are talking over 10,000 eyewitnesses across a time frame of hundreds of years going back to at least the time of Samuel de' Champlain. Surely not all of these eyewitnesses are hoaxers, liars, or misidentifying "normal" animals. That would be even more incredulous and would stretch the imagination even further than supposing Bigfoot exists. 

 

Footprints can be faked, but by and large the hoaxes are easily identifiable as such by trained investigators. Grover Krantz even offered $10,000 cash to anyone who could fool him with a fake track. Needless to say the cash amount had no takers. Track casts with dermal ridges and a mid-tarsal break are outside the scope of ability of most hoaxers with their plain wooden stompers. Add to this the remote and inaccessible locations of many of these track finds, and the probability of them all being hoaxes diminishes significantly. 

 

The Patterson-Gimlin Film is the Holy Grail of Bigfoot evidence, and perhaps the single strongest piece of evidence for the creature's existence. Till this day it has never been debunked, and no one has convincingly demonstrated how such a costume could have been made in 1967. The technology to make such a costume didn't exist in 1967. 

 

So your assumption that Bigfoot doesn't exist is more unlikely and indeed more difficult to prove than the inverse. 

[Wolfjewel]

Best interaction of yeah and nay, and best explanation for Bigfoot being genuine that I’ve  read!

[SwiftWater]

On 6/23/2021 at 10:50 AM, Huntster said:

 

So what is the psychological basis for a need to hoax others?

Gaining a feeling of power over the person being hoaxed. They might imagine creating the hoax, having the subject discover the hoax, become excited at the discovery, only to be shamed by the BF community as their discovery is debunked. Or some other similar ending that creates a feeling of sadness, dejection, loss of hope or power by the subject being hoaxed.

For a hoaxer its more like a prank and that can give a person a feeling of dominance over someone else in the manner of "haha I managed to fool you!". It also satiates an aggressive need to assault the other persons beliefs and mock them for their beliefs. Similar in a manner as to when someone trolls online, they feel dominant and aggressive against the subject they are trolling.

[Huntster]

^^^^ Isn't all that psychological disturbance every bit as much (or more) disturbing than acceptance of the existence of sasquatches? 
 

Is the psychology of either belief or hoaxing deserving of study or treatment? Or are both too insignificant to be bothered with? That isn't s trivisl question. There is evidence in the media that at least one young man was killed trying to hoax people driving along a road. I know of no deadly accidents related to belief, but I suppose there could be.

[Doug]

5 hours ago, SwiftWater said:

It also satiates an aggressive need to assault the other persons beliefs and mock them for their beliefs.

I think this is the usual case.

[Arvedis]

10 hours ago, SwiftWater said:

Gaining a feeling of power over the person being hoaxed. They might imagine creating the hoax, having the subject discover the hoax, become excited at the discovery, only to be shamed by the BF community as their discovery is debunked. Or some other similar ending that creates a feeling of sadness, dejection, loss of hope or power by the subject being hoaxed.

For a hoaxer its more like a prank and that can give a person a feeling of dominance over someone else in the manner of "haha I managed to fool you!". It also satiates an aggressive need to assault the other persons beliefs and mock them for their beliefs. Similar in a manner as to when someone trolls online, they feel dominant and aggressive against the subject they are trolling.

 

I will make 1 editorial suggestion to your first sentence. A reason for hoaxing is it is supposed to give the hoaxer a psychological feeling of gratification, thinking they are outsmarting people. Sadly, many politicians, criminals, and other shady characters use a similar principle to justify their actions.

 

For BF hoaxing in particular, it's a lot of work to be convincing.  Even with powerful video and imaging tools these days, a person would have to be really into their own psychological bubble to spend time doing that. It's like a job to plan all of it out and try to pull it all together. This is how law enforcement approaches profiling for serious cases. There are only so many unhinged people spinning like that. They don't just leave the clues of the crime or hoax. They have left traces of their practice runs somewhere else to be found. In fact, the hoaxer always leaves that easter egg, intentionally or not, that leads to their undoing. They want to see how far their act can go.  What funs is causing mayhem if there is no chance they will get caught?