Humans Will Likely Welcome Alien Life Instead Of Fearing It, Suggests New ASU Study

At the moment, scientists have yet to confirm the presence of life on other planets, as aliens are still very much in the realm of science fiction. But many have wondered how humanity will react if, one day, alien life forms make their way to our planet. That was the focus of a pilot study from a team of Arizona State University researchers, whose findings suggest that people will be more likely to welcome extraterrestrial life, rather than attack or avoid such alien beings out of fear.

In a news release posted on the school’s official website, Arizona State University assistant professor of psychology and study lead Michael Varnum said that mankind “would actually be pretty upbeat” if confronted by alien life. He added that there has been much speculation over the years about how people will react to such a discovery, but thanks to his team’s study, there is now “systematical empirical research” that could predict the nature of these reactions.

For the pilot study, Varnum and his colleagues looked at articles based on three major scientific events from the past two decades or so. These included the possible discovery of fossilized Martian microbes in a meteorite in 1996, the dimming around Tabby’s Star that was spotted in 2015 and believed by some to be a sign of an artificial “Dyson sphere,” and last year’s discovery of multiple Earth-like exoplanets found within their host star’s habitable zone. According to the ASU news release, the language used in the articles was largely positive in nature, with few words or passages that had negative connotations.

A second study, also led by Varnum, had his team surveying about 500 U.S. residents online, asking them to write how they would feel if they found that scientists had found proof of alien microbes. As noted by Science News, the team used computer software to determine the percentage of words hinting at positive and negative emotion, as well as the percentage of words that hinted at reward or risk, such as “benefit” for the former category and “danger” for the latter.

Although no specific figures were reported, Science News pointed out that the test subjects “generally” leaned toward positive or reward-focused language, as opposed to negative or risk-focused statements, when reacting to the news. This also applied to the participants’ expectations of how other people will take the hypothetical reports of alien microbes.

“I would have some excitement about the news,” said one of the participants in the second study.

“It would be exciting even if it was a primitive form.”

If we discover alien life, will humanity be able to keep its cool? https://t.co/DtbmZt7uJB pic.twitter.com/5ssp51AUkd

— Discover Magazine (@DiscoverMag) February 17, 2018

In a third study, Varnum surveyed another group of 500 U.S.-based volunteers, who were asked to read one of two newspaper reports, one of them dealing with the purported Martian microbe find from 1996, the other focusing on the 2010 creation of a man-made bacterial cell. Likewise, the participants mostly had positive reactions to both alien life-related articles, with the Martian microbe story proving to be the more popular among the two.

Apart from the aforementioned science news stories, Varnum also focused on some rather recent reports to further back up his theory that humanity will probably welcome alien life if it is ever confirmed to exist. As he and other ASU researchers spoke at this week’s American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Austin, Texas, Varnum presented unpublished results from his analysis of the recent speculation that the ‘Oumuamua asteroid might actually be a spaceship and not a space rock. Once again, there were more positive than negative emotions hinted at by these reports.

“[If the results from the studies are] taken together, this suggests if we find out we’re not alone, we’ll take the news rather well,” said Varnum.