Posted on 02/16/2018 12:18:24 PM PST by Red Badger
Credit: CC0 Public Domain
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As humans reach out technologically to see if there are other life forms in the universe, one important question needs to be answered: When we make contact, how are we going to handle it? Will we feel threatened and react in horror? Will we embrace it? Will we even understand it? Or, will we shrug it off as another thing we have to deal with in our increasingly fast-paced world?
"If we came face to face with life outside of Earth, we would actually be pretty upbeat about it," said Arizona State University Assistant Professor of Psychology 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."
Varnum presented his findings during a press briefing Feb. 16 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Austin, Texas.
In a pilot study, Varnum and his colleagues analyzed language in newspaper articles about past potential extraterrestrial life discoveries. Through the work, Varnum aimed to address the nature of reactions to extraterrestrial life by analyzing reactions using a software program that quantifies emotions, feelings, drives and other psychological states in written texts.
The articles in the pilot study focused on the 1996 discovery of possibly fossilized extraterrestrial Martian microbes; the 2015 discovery of periodic dimming around Tabby's Star, thought to indicate the presence of an artificially constructed "Dyson sphere;" and the 2017 discovery of Earth-like exoplanets in the habitable zone of a star. The pilot study found that language in the coverage of these events showed significantly more positive than negative emotions.
In a separate study, the team 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," one participant said. "It would be exciting even if it was a primitive form."
In another study, Varnum's group 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 past article from The New York Times describing possible evidence of ancient microbial life on a Mars meteorite. The second group of participants read an article from the Times 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 extraterrestrial life than human made synthetic life.
"This discovery shows that other planets have the ability to have life on them," a participant said. "It's a very interesting and exciting finding that could be only the beginning."
In unpublished results presented at the conference, Varnum analyzed recent media coverage of the possibility that the interstellar Oumuamua asteroid might actually be a spaceship. Here too, he 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.
Varnum said the studies show that "taken together, this suggests if we find out we're not alone, we'll take the news rather well."
The results of the first three studies were published Jan. 10 in Frontiers in Psychology and analysis of reactions to Oumuamua were presented at AAAS for the first time. ASU doctoral students Hannah Bercovici and Jung Yul Kwon, and ASU alumna Katja Cunningham, assisted Varnum in the research.
Varnum will formally present this research in his presentation, "What Happens When Everyone Finds Out?" The presentation will be given at the "Is There a Future for Humanity in Space?" session on Feb. 17.
Explore further: No alien 'signals' from cigar-shaped asteroid: researchers
More information: Jung Yul Kwon et al, How Will We React to the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life?, Frontiers in Psychology (2018). DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02308
Journal reference: Frontiers in Psychology
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-02-humans-react-pretty-news-alien.html#jCp
I saw a show one time where a guy pointed out the utter ridiculousness of this. He asked that if you somehow drive a modern nuclear powered submarine into a harbor in 1492 and say, "Here you go. Make a copy". Could they? Not a chance.
RB, there will be no alien contact. Distance precludes visits.
Now, for another lesson, you should watch the series on Netflix called COLONY. you won’t be disappointed. Your friend from Missouri, distant relative of one Jesse James.
I think that they have to be better than democrats. We know RATs are stupid and dangerous. Aliens we do not know about their nature yet but the worst they could be is smart and dangerous.
Good point.
I guess it will depend on their agenda...
Which one is Obama?
Near 8 billion of us, we’re probably ready for harvesting...
Some Humans will try to convert them to Islam
“AC/DC nothing works”
I’d definitely consider it a hostile act if I couldn’t listen to AC/DC.
That’s not exactly the whole of what’s been alleged at Roswell/A51. What’s alleged is that pieces and components were farmed out to top industry and researchers and the study of those are responsible for enormous technical leaps.
“As humans reach out technologically to see if there are other life forms in the universe, one important question needs to be answered: When we make contact, how are we going to handle it? Will we feel threatened and react in horror? Will we embrace it? Will we even understand it? Or, will we shrug it off as another thing we have to deal with in our increasingly fast-paced world?
“If we came face to face with life outside of Earth, we would actually be pretty upbeat about it,” said Arizona State University Assistant Professor of Psychology 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.””
FWIW, if there ARE any technological civilizations out there capable of coming to “visit” us, we’d be damned fools to even let them know that we exist, let alone encourage them to do so. Why? 1) The technology to get here from any other star system is centuries beyond our technology. 2) Any technological civilization is composed of beings that exist at the top of their planet’s food chain...meaning that they were, as a race, smarter, tougher, meaner, more tenacious and competitive than every other species on their planet, and those characteristics do not just go away. So, asking to meet with such smart, tough, etc. beings when they have technology that makes our present technology look more primitive than that of the Middle Ages compared to ours is rather stupid. Species-ending stupid. You’d be smarter to cover yourself in honey, run up to the nearest bear, and slug him in the mouth.
Here’s what we ought to do: prepare the infrastructure to eliminate radio, TV or any other signals that can travel beyond the solar system. When it is just about to come on line, stage a fake all-out nuclear war on TV, radio, etc. Fake that we’ve destroyed ourselves and poisoned the planet in the process, so no other civilization even wants to look at us, let alone visit.
Especially if the alien life is edible.
If the ‘aliens’ use radio communications like we have for over a hundred years, there must not be any within a hundred light-years radius of us, because we haven’t heard anything from them nor them of us......yet.
But each day those signals travel farther and farther out, and yes I know they diminish in power as a square of the distance. SO that our signals and theirs as well would simply sink into the cosmic background noise of the Big Bang.
If they are approximately the same distance from the center of the galaxy as we are, and their sun is comparable to ours, then they may be at the same level we are, trapped in their solar system the same as us.
We could possibly communicate on a 200 year reply basis.....................
PT Barnum comes to mind...
Ping - of interest...
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