Most of us would likely be delighted to learn that aliens exist, whether they are intelligent or not.
As the mysterious interstellar object Oumuamua swept through our solar system last October, breathtaking news stories began to emerge asking the same question: What if it's a spaceship? There was absolutely no reason to think so, but many people still hoped.
Throughout our history, most of the new strange cosmic phenomena have made us wonder: perhaps this is the very moment when we first encounter alien life? These expectations may not be unfounded at all. Many scientists cite extensive, evidence-based arguments that we will eventually discover life beyond our planet. For those who really believe in this, the most obscure question is whether such news could cause global panic. And it depends on how our consciousness, which is greatly influenced by the earthly environment and society, will perceive a potential threat from something completely outside of our usual environment.
“A very large number of people have the feeling that the government will keep the discovery of intelligent alien life a secret, otherwise everyone will just go crazy,” says SETI astronomer Seth Shostak. But perhaps our brains, tuned for millions of years of evolution to be wary of predators, will benefit from the shock of the arrival of incredibly powerful alien beings from distant obscurity into our world.
However, until the situation has reached the "alien invasion", and the starships of ill-wishers are not sent to Earth, and we are already reading the news about the discovery of extraterrestrial civilizations. How do we react? Psychologists at Arizona State University in the United States used specialized software to assess the feelings of 15 articles about past discoveries that could be interpreted as reports of alien life.
The articles cover topics such as new Earth-like planets, mysterious astrophysical phenomena, and possible life on Mars. A study published in January in the journal Frontiers in Psychology found that more positive than negative words were used in articles. Although it was not reported in the newspapers, the research team later found that the articles about Oumuamua were also full of positives. The results will be announced Saturday in Austin, Texas, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
"I think we tend to be positively disposed towards new things unless we have a good reason to suspect that it might harm us," says psychologist Michael Varnum. "Of course, I am not saying that if we received news of many huge warships heading towards Earth under the control of aliens, we would be happy."
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Mars microbes
According to Varnum and many astrobiologists, since simple, single-celled species of life are likely much more abundant in space than interstellar civilizations, we are likely more likely to one day discover alien microbes than someone to talk to. For his next set of experiments, he asked about 500 American residents to write their thoughts on how they, and society at large, would react to the news of such a discovery.
He then asked a separate group of about 250 people to read and express their opinion on an article published in 1996 in the New York Times, which spoke of the potential discovery of frozen microbes in a meteorite from the planet Mars. He compared the responses of this group to those of another 250 people who read a 2010 article on the first synthetic life form created in a laboratory. Both stories were submitted without a date of publication, as if they were fresh (although some participants in the experiment obviously realized that this was not the case).
After analyzing the emotional tone of the responses, the researchers concluded that when describing both extraterrestrial and synthetic life, participants generally used positive words more than negative ones. The upward trend in the number of positive words was more pronounced in responses to the article on extraterrestrial life, which may indicate that the data was not distorted, for example, by the possible tendency of a person to write or respond positively.
Typically, participants said that their reaction would be more positive than the reaction of society as a whole. Varnum believes that this is due to a psychological tendency called "illusory superiority", that is, when a person seems to be better than others.
However, Shostak notes that the very methodology of the experiment could set the participants up for more positive feedback. Even if this is not the case, he assures that the conclusions did not surprise him.
“If we announced tomorrow that we had found microbes on Mars, people would not be making joyful demonstrations on the street,” he says. - And it doesn't seem to me that anyone thinks otherwise. And if the Martians landed in Silicon Valley, I would buy a bunch of frozen pizzas and give dyru, like many others."
Unknown aliens
What if the discovery is somewhere between such extremes as alien microbes or predatory, hostile aliens besieging Earth? Will people, depending on the era or society in which they live, react to such news differently?
Our brains have been trained since ancient times to protect themselves from predators. However, as we move around the world, experience can also influence what we accept and what we fear, and how open we are to new things. This study only focused on US residents, but neuroscientists believe the results can be very different around the world.
"If we take a less open and more xenophobic society, it can perceive the discovery of an extraterrestrial civilization much more negative and disturbing," says Israel Liberson, professor of psychiatry, psychology and neurology at the University of Michigan.
“Culture can be a powerful determinant of how we feel about new things,” said Cornelius Gross, a neuroscientist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Rome, who studies fear neural networks. “People came to America in search of something new, we chose this path and continued to cultivate it, putting innovation at the forefront.”
In addition, says Shostak, a person's religious beliefs can play an important role in shaping his reaction to the news that humanity is actually not as universal as many traditions.
“The reaction in such a situation can be influenced even by what films about the invasion of aliens people watched or what science fiction books they read. If you've watched a lot of UFO movies, in which aliens have always been goodies, you should understand that this material will affect your cerebral cortex, "says Gross," and you will try to adjust your sensations for future new experiences."
“But overall,” says Liberson, “context is key. Individually or collectively, people will react very differently to watching a lion in a zoo and meeting a lion in the African savannah, just as we will react differently to reading about aliens in science fiction and meeting them in real life..
If scientists discover something new directly in our surrounding world, but we cannot compare it with something that we already know, it is useless and even foolish to make predictions about how humanity might react to this. Gross believes that we will first try to understand - a response that can be interpreted as another ancient, evolutionarily fashioned defense system aimed at taking control of a new situation.
There will probably be both positive and negative reactions, but all of them will be based on the human need to control the environment and make sure that nothing threatens him, says Gross.
“When we think about what life forms might still exist, we are really limited by the fact that we only know about the evolution of life to this day,” says Varnum. "But I suspect the stranger this new lifeform is, the more excited people will be."
Olga_Vesna