How Will We React to the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life?

Abstract

How will humanity react to the discovery of extraterrestrial life? Speculation on this topic abounds, but empirical research is practically non-existent. We report the results of three empirical studies assessing psychological reactions to the discovery of extraterrestrial life using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) text analysis software. We examined language use in media coverage of past discovery announcements of this nature, with a focus on extraterrestrial microbial life (Pilot Study). A large online sample (N = 501) was asked to write about their own and humanity's reaction to a hypothetical announcement of such a discovery (Study 1), and an independent, large online sample (N = 256) was asked to read and respond to a newspaper story about the claim that fossilized extraterrestrial microbial life had been found in a meteorite of Martian origin (Study 2). Across these studies, we found that reactions were significantly more positive than negative, and more reward vs. risk oriented. A mini-meta-analysis revealed large overall effect sizes (positive vs. negative affect language: g = 0.98; reward vs. risk language: g = 0.81). We also found that people's forecasts of their own reactions showed a greater positivity bias than their forecasts of humanity's reactions (Study 1), and that responses to reading an actual announcement of the discovery of extraterrestrial microbial life showed a greater positivity bias than responses to reading an actual announcement of the creation of man-made synthetic life (Study 2). Taken together, this work suggests that our reactions to a future confirmed discovery of microbial extraterrestrial life are likely to be fairly positive.Keywords: extraterrestrial life, societal reactions, LIWC, affect, scientific discovery INTRODUCTIONHow will we react to the discovery of alien life? In 1953, the Robertson Panel warned of the danger of mass hysteria (Durant, 1953), and a recent national poll found that 25% of American respondents anticipated people would panic (Harrison, 2011). Depictions of contact with extraterrestrial life in fiction for over a century have highlighted potential downsides of alien contact, from H. G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" (Wells, 1898(Wells, /2003, to the television series "The X-Files" (Carter, 1993(Carter, -2002, and films such as "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (Blaustein and Wise, 1951), "Independence Day" (Devlin and Emmerich, 1996), and "Edge of Tomorrow" (Hoffs et al., 2014). However, most speculations regarding humanity's reactions to extraterrestrial life, both in fiction and otherwise, have focused on discovering evidence of intelligent life from elsewhere, Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 1 January 2018 | Volume 8 | Article 2308Kwon et al. Psychological Responses to E.T. Lifewhile less consideration has been given to how we may react to the discovery of extraterrestrial life that is not intelligent, even though we are more likely to encounter microbial life in our solar system (Race and Randolph, 2002;Race, 2008;Gronstal, 20...

Mythic forecasts: researcher portrayals of extraterrestrial life discovery

“…Kwon et al . 's (2018) psychological survey on how respondents would react to a credible announcement of ETL discovery; and Jones's (2013) discussion of how rapid social-media propagation of such an announcement might affect societal reactions. In contrast, an example of ‘extended discovery’ acknowledgement in the scholarly literature is Dick's (2013) statement that even ‘discovery of a signal from extraterrestrial intelligence… [would likely] entail the detection of an unusual narrow-band signal, followed by a more-or-less extended period of interpretation before understanding gels, perhaps many years later’ (p. 237).…”

Encountering UFOs and aliens in the tourism industry

“…While the movie industry often expresses societies reactions as somewhat dystopian, portraying scenes of chaos, crumbling buildings, fires raging, panic and hysteria as riots break out and societies collapse, the reality could arguably be different. Researchers, Kwon et al (2018) in their own study examined a range of (alien-related) news headlines and their own surveys concluded that people's reactions to any potential detections of alien life, both hypothetically and to the famously false announcement of microbial fossils from Mars, are generally quite positive. Others remain less convinced, such as Seth Shostak (a Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute).…”