X-Message-Number: 30451 From: David Stodolsky <> Subject: Re: What makes people take action? Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2008 20:55:51 +0100 References: <> Previously, I suggested that religious persons would be difficult to reach, even if they were willing to change their attitude toward cryonics. Here we have direct support for this conclusion. Even when we include only those who claim they are willing to change their attitude, there is a highly significant difference between atheists/ agnostics and others on the question, "I would feel more favorably toward the idea of cryonics if a human were revived." (p<.01). There are also trends in the responses to "Extending one's life span through Cryonics is unnatural, selfish, and immoral." (p<.1) and "I'm very optimistic about humankind's future and want to be there to see and participate in the amazing advances that will be made." (p<.1). Only atheists show a trend in their responses to, "I believe that Cryonics is an exciting idea and intend on looking into it further." (p<.1) in this group of persons willing to change their attitudes. (It is more difficult to achieve significance here, since over half of the respondents have been deleted. Only those most open to attitude change are included.) Thus, even the ultimate success of cryonics, revival of a human, would not make religious people more favorable toward cryonics. Religious people appear to reject cryonics on moral grounds and they are less optimistic about the future. This indicates a worldview resistant to change as a result of information avoidance. On the other hand, atheists/agnostics would be more likely to seek information about cryonics given news of revival of a human. Only atheists appear to be more likely to seek information about cryonics even without such news. Earlier, we showed that those who indicated either neutral or disagreement to the statement, "I would feel more favorably toward the idea of cryonics under no circumstances." were less religious than those who were in agreement. Here we have selected only those who were in disagreement, therefore, those with the greatest readiness to change. These are also the least religious persons. However, even within this subsample, the religious persons would not be motivated to seek information about cryonics by news of revival of a human. Therefore, the educational strategy commonly used to promote cryonics will only work with atheists and agnostics. In the total sample of 517, there are 34 atheists and 85 agnostics. Thus, 23% are reachable by the current strategy and this requires presenting the information to the person, except in the case of atheists, who comprise less than 7% of the population. One could object that many religious persons do, in fact, sign up for biostasis. However, this would be expected, since only 23% of persons are areligious. Therefore, if religious persons were five times less likely to sign up, we would expect to see the two groups equally represented. Finally, we must keep in mind that the conclusions here describe the 'average' person and some persons may be unusual in a way that effects the sign up rate. Given the extremely small percentage of people who sign up from each group, such deviations would be expected to have a major influence, perhaps even dominating the results. Also, there may be factors not included in the survey that have a major influence. In fact, the results suggest that this must be true. The results above show that religion is a major, if not dominating influence. Religious world views or any other type of worldview are known to be generated by groups. The categories for indicating religious views are most likely too broad to be useful for our purposes. For example, we know that within Christianity, there are contradictor views about the application of medical technology. Some sects refuse inoculation, while other accept them. So, the category Christianity could easily include persons with opposing views on cryonics. Therefore, one sect might be over represented in signups, thereby distorting the figure. This would be expected given the extremely small percentage of people who sign up. Only by identifying which sect a person comes from can we get a clear picture. While this makes it difficult to make predictions, it also points us in the direction of what can be done to promote cryonics effectively, that is, a group (creation) strategy. It also suggests that a survey should ask questions such as whether the person has any family members already signed up, etc. Finally, the endpoint in the survey is the question, "I believe that Cryonics is an exciting idea and intend on looking into it further." Even if people do look into cryonics after expressing this intension, it is only one of many steps toward actually signing up, so we shouldn't expect to see the results from this survey accurately predicting signups. However, the importance of worldview and the worldview defense we do see suggests that terror management theory is an appropriate theoretical framework. The research done in this area might be leveraged to achieve results far beyond what could be achieved on the basis of even the best survey. One prediction from that theory is that the mention of death will cause a reflexive withdrawal of attention. This is counterproductive, if we wish to educate or influence someone. This theoretical point is well supported by the survey data. The most influential question was, 'I'm excited about the prospect of waking up in a body made young again through bio-technological advances." On the other hand, agreement with the item, "I don't think about Cryonics because I don't like thinking about death." shows a negative effect on the action item, "I believe that Cryonics is an exciting idea and intend on looking into it further." dss David Stodolsky Skype: davidstodolsky Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=30451