How will humans react to the discovery of alien life? Speculation on this topic abounds, but empirical research is practically non-existent. In a paper published online January 10 in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, Arizona State University researchers report the results of three empirical studies assessing psychological reactions to extraterrestrial life discoveries.
This high-resolution scanning electron microscope image shows an unusual tube-like structural form that is less than 1/100th the width of a human hair in size found in the Martian meteorite ALH84001. Image credit: NASA.
“If we came face to face with life outside of Earth, we would actually be pretty upbeat about it,” said Arizona State University’s Dr. Michael Varnum.
“So far, there’s been a lot of speculation about how we might respond to this kind of news, but until now, almost no systematic empirical research.”
In a pilot study, Dr. Varnum and co-authors analyzed language in newspaper articles about past potential extraterrestrial life discoveries.
Through the work, they aimed to address the nature of reactions to alien life by analyzing reactions using a software program that quantifies emotions, feelings, drives and other psychological states in written texts.
“We identified five relevant discovery events: (i) the 1967 discovery of pulsars which were initially thought to be potential extraterrestrial broadcasts; (ii) the 1977 Wow! signal, which was also thought to be potential extraterrestrial broadcasts; (iii) the 1996 discovery of potential fossilized extraterrestrial microbes in a meteorite of Martian origin; (iv) the 2015 discovery of periodic dimming around an unusual star called KIC 8462852 (Tabby’s star) which was thought to potentially indicate the presence of an artificially constructed Dyson sphere; and (v) the 2017 discovery of numerous Earth-like exoplanets in the habitable zone of a star,” the authors said.
They found that language in the coverage of these events showed significantly more positive than negative emotions.
In a separate study, they asked more than 500 different participants to write about their own hypothetical reactions and humanity’s hypothetical reaction to an announcement that extraterrestrial microbial life had been discovered.
Participants’ responses also showed significantly more positive than negative emotions, both when contemplating their own reactions and those of humanity as a whole.
“I would have some excitement about the news. It would be exciting even if it was a primitive form,” one participant said.
In another study, the scientists presented an additional sample of more than 500 people with past news coverage of scientific discoveries and asked them to write about their reactions.
The participants were divided into two groups. In one group, participants read a 1996 article from The New York Times describing possible evidence of ancient microbial life on a Mars meteorite.
The second group of participants read a 2010 article from the same newspaper describing the claimed creation of synthetic human made life created in the lab.
Here too, the team found evidence of significantly more positive than negative emotions in responses to the claimed discovery of extraterrestrial life, and this effect was stronger in response to reading about alien life than human made synthetic life.
“This discovery shows that other planets have the ability to have life on them. It’s a very interesting and exciting finding that could be only the beginning,” a participant said.
In unpublished results, the researchers analyzed recent media coverage of the possibility that 1I/2017 U1 ‘Oumuamua, the first asteroid of extrasolar origin identified in our Solar System, might actually be a spaceship.
Here too, they found evidence of more positive than negative emotions, suggesting that we may also react positively to the news of the discovery of evidence of intelligent life from elsewhere in the Universe.
“These studies show that taken together, this suggests if we find out we’re not alone, we’ll take the news rather well,” Dr. Varnum said.
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Jung Yul Kwon et al. How Will We React to the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life? Front. Psychol, published online January 10, 2018; doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02308
