on Monday four federal agencies the FBI Department of Homeland Security Department of Defense and the Federal Aviation Administration put out a rare joint statement addressing the Drone sightings in New Jersey saying that the total 5,000 reports of drones have led to 100 investigative leads for the agencies and that no abnormal activity was detected saying many of these sightings are either law enforcement commercial or hobbyist drones and that many of the sightings have in fact been manned aircraft helicopter and even stars that were mistakenly reported as drones but even in the days since that report questions and concerns have continued to swirl including here on our air where we've been asking lots of questions of our lawmakers but some call it hysteria in fact Dr Gary Small chair of psychology at hackensac Meridian health has done extensive work on the topic of mass hysteria he's here now to offer his perspective Dr small so great to have you with us tonight we're at this kind of critical moment where a lot of people uh have very low trust in the government there's low public trust I'd say um for an example we just heard reports of things that the government withheld information that they withheld during covid-19 and the pandemic and now these drones are introduced at a time when there is this distrust you call it hysteria though what's your take on it well actually it's not exactly hysteria in the sense of mass hysteria is Define where there's an outbreak of physical symptoms due to a psychological cause it's really more mass panic or a shared delusion because officials have looked into this they've taken that the reports very seriously but there's been no evidence that there's any nefarious characters the explanations are actually piloted planes or hobbyists with drones uh but they have to keep looking at it because it it's always possible that something bad is going on however whenever people are under stress or they're anxious it's very they're very quick to attribute theories to what's causing the problem and in some way that sort of binds our anxiety as someone who studies hysteria and mass hysteria are there ways that elected officials should be responding because a lot of the first responses from the White House were no you're not seeing drones and and perhaps that played into folks saying oh there there's a cover up here because yes we know what we're seeing with our own eyes are there ways that they should be responding to kind of quell those fears or quell the Panic well certainly uh attacking The Observers is is not a good thing and I've seen this I've investigated many outbreaks of mass hysteria and people get quite defensive because they're very convinced what they're seeing and what they're experiencing it's important to be transparent and for officials to let people know what they do know and to assure them that they're looking into it taking it seriously and telling them how they're looking into it what they're doing how do you respond doctor when you see people turning towards conspiracy theories coming up with their own uh conclusions for for what's happening that might be unexplained well you know I can understand it it's a it's human nature when you live in a world with lots of stressors when there's a lot of uncertainty we're looking for explanations that reassures us the bottom line is people like to be in control of their lives and I think a lot of us right now are feeling a bit out of control these drones we can bet on one thing for sure is they won't be the last cause for public concern we live in a tumultuous times what is your advice to folks for how to just really manage through their emotions as things come up as we make our way through this modern existence of ours well I think it's important to to keep a level head on it to try to uh look at the information that's available and the explanations and and we've had these kinds of out breaks many times in history the one that comes to mind is this Seattle windshield pitting epidemic where people in Seattle started noting W windshield pits and there were all kinds of theories about cosmic rays about nuclear testing causing it eventually it died down but what tended to spread these false beliefs were newspaper reports and here we have the internet and social media that puts these these spread of rumors on on steroids it really becomes a quite a rapid spread of ideas that only feeds into the anxiety and the frenzy and just really quickly you know they say when you get a new car you start to notice those cars on the road how much of this in your mind is folks all of a sudden tuning in to one topic when it becomes the topic I think it's it's probably mostly due to that I I have not been investigating these myself it's possible something's going on but when you look into it you find there are rational explanations for these sightings all right Dr Gary Small thanks for offering a little bit of levity for us tonight appreciate you being here thank you [Music]