So-called alien sightings always get people excited, but how would humanity really react should there be an announcement regarding the discovery of alien life? According to researchers, human reaction would likely to be generally positive rather than negative.
Mass Hysteria And Panic
In 1953, a Science Advisory Panel warned of potential mass hysteria as a reaction to an announcement about alien life. More recently, a national poll revealed that 25 percent of Americans would likely panic in the event. However, despite such prospects, there is no denying man's curiosity when it comes to the search of interstellar neighbors. What's more, there is little known empirical evidence that could potentially predict how humanity would actually respond.
In order to shed light on the matter, researchers from Arizona State University (ASU) used a language-analyzing software to gauge how humanity might really respond to alien life. They studied three main things: the media coverage reactions to past announcements, individual participants' self-reported predictions of how they might react to the discovery of alien life, and reactions to the past announcement of how there might have been life on Mars once.
Because of the higher probability of discovering microbial alien life rather than intelligent alien life, researchers focused on the individuals' reactions to such discoveries or hypothetical discoveries.
Three Studies, One Main Reaction
In the pilot study, researchers analyzed the articles that covered past alien life "discoveries" such as the 1996 discovery of fossilized Martian microbes and the alien-related prospects surrounding the dimming of Tabby's star. Generally, they found that the language used in the coverage significantly leaned toward the positive rather than the negative emotions.
In a separate study where researchers asked 500 participants to predict their potential reactions to a hypothetical alien discovery, the participants' responses were still significantly more positive whether the reactions were individual or for humanity as a whole, though individual responses were more strongly positive compared to their predictions for humanity's potential reaction. Furthermore, a third study wherein 500 participants were asked to write their reactions to past alien microbe discoveries also yielded the same positive reactions. In fact, some even expressed great interest and excitement.
At a press conference at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), study coauthor Michael Varnum of ASU also described the yet-to-be-published results of another study wherein they analyzed the media coverage related to the possibility that the interstellar asteroid Oumuamua might be a spaceship. Similar to the results of their earlier studies, the language used was also seen to be more positive than negative.
'We Will Take It Rather Well'
What does this mean? Generally speaking, the team's results show that humanity may actually take the news of alien life rather well instead of going into a disastrous mass hysteria. Though researchers do not give the specifics as to the possible reasoning behind the positive reactions, they surmise that it could perhaps be because humans take comfort in the knowledge that we are not alone in the universe or perhaps because the hypothetical discovery may strengthen their own worldviews.
"We began this paper with a question: how will we react when we learn that alien life has been discovered? If our findings provide a reasonable guide, then the answer appears to be that we will take it rather well," states the researchers.
The study is published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
