# Lay beliefs about the badness, likelihood, and importance of human extinction

## TL;DR

People see preventing human extinction as important but not the top priority, even when they estimate a 5% chance of it happening this century.

## Contribution

The study reveals public attitudes toward human extinction and how they compare extinction prevention to other societal issues.

## Key findings

- People consider extinction prevention a societal priority but not the highest.
- Public estimates of extinction likelihood are low (5% this century), but they believe a 30% chance would be needed for top priority status.
- Reason-based interventions have little effect on changing people's views about extinction prevention's importance.

## Abstract

Human extinction would mean the end of humanity’s achievements, culture, and future potential. According to some ethical views, this would be a terrible outcome for humanity. But what are the public’s beliefs about human extinction? And how much do people prioritize preventing extinction over other societal issues? Across five empirical studies (N = 2,147; U.S. and China), we find that people consider extinction prevention a societal priority and deserving of greatly increased societal resources. However, despite estimating the likelihood of human extinction to be 5% this century, people believe that the chances would need to be around 30% for it to be the very highest priority (U.S. medians). In line with this, people consider extinction prevention to be only one among several important societal issues. We also find that people’s judgments about the relative importance of extinction prevention appear relatively fixed and hard to change by reason-based interventions.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1038/s41598-026-39070-w.