Surveys on the Existence of Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life and Effects of Revealing Expert Consensus

TL;DR

This study surveyed highly educated individuals to understand their beliefs about extraterrestrial intelligent life, revealing significant misconceptions about social and expert beliefs, and showing that revealing actual consensus has limited impact on personal convictions.

Contribution

It uncovers the dual dimensions of consensus misperception—prevalence and conviction strength—and demonstrates resistance to belief change despite expert consensus disclosure.

Findings

95.01% believed extraterrestrial intelligent life exists

Participants underestimated expert conviction strength

Revelation of actual consensus had minimal effect on beliefs

Abstract

Vickers et al. (2025) established that 58.20% of astrobiology experts believe intelligent extraterrestrial life likely exists, providing the first empirical baseline for public comparison. We surveyed 6,114 highly educated and scientifically engaged individuals (77.60% bachelor's degree+; 67.99% high-to-very-high scientific engagement) to assess their beliefs about extraterrestrial intelligent life existence: (1) personal beliefs, (2) perceived social circle beliefs, (3) perceived expert beliefs, and (4) responses to expert consensus revelation. Results showed 95.01% believed extraterrestrial intelligent life exists, with 62.59% holding definitive rather than probable convictions. Participants exhibited massive pluralistic ignorance, a 'cosmic closet', underestimating social circle beliefs by 46.07 percentage points despite near-universal personal conviction. Participants also exhibited a novel 'conviction intensity gap': while overestimating expert belief prevalence (67.63% vs. 58.20% actual), they underestimated expert conviction strength, perceiving only 21.10% as holding definitive beliefs. Experimental revelation of actual consensus (N = 5,106; 83.51% passed manipulation check) produced negligible personal belief change (d = -0.11) and small social belief change (d = 0.14). These findings demonstrate that consensus misperception operates along two dimensions, prevalence and intensity, and that even scientifically engaged audiences resist belief revision via expert consensus information.