In a 1993 study, researchers took a sample of people who claimed to have had an intense experience with an unidentified flying object (ufo) and a sample of people who did not claim to have had such an experience (spanos et al., 1993). they then compared the two groups on a wide variety of variables, including iq. the group of 25 people who claimed to have had an intense experience with a ufo had a mean iq of 101.6, and the standard deviation of these iqs was 8.9. a control group of 53 community members who had not reported ufo experiences had a mean iq of 100.6 with a standard deviation of 12.3.