Hard SF : Aliens : Alien Psychology
There could be various kinds of intelligent species with very different physiologies, home worlds, evolutionary histories, and resulting psychologies. However, there could be certain kinds of common elements in the psychology of most intelligent species.
When humans are impacted by a natural disaster, they find it traumatic. The effect is not merely a loss of people or things they care about. There is a deeper psychological wound. According to experts, this derives from a pair of fundamental elements in our minds. During childhood, there is a period in which an individual’s self-image and his view of the world develop in conjunction with each other.
Most children seek to see the world as essentially benevolent. This does not necessarily mean there is no bad in the world or that the person has no negative experiences. What the person needs to believe is that if he makes the correct choices and takes the correct actions, the world will respond by doing what he wants.
What is so traumatic about natural disasters is they show individuals how much the world can do undesirable things no matter what one’s choices and actions are. Or at least that would be the interpretation in the mind’s rational sector. On the emotional, subconscious level the person links his self-image and belief in a dependable or safe world. Since the world has done him harm, he responds as if he is responsible by making the wrong choices or actions. He experiences inner turmoil and depression.
This pairing of self-image and world view can be seen as arising from the fact humans are conscious, tool-using beings. Intelligence does not evolve so we can read and write novels, determine the value of pi, or create spelling checkers. Tool use, especially, has the purpose of changing the world so it will give us more of what we want. It’s not so surprising that human psychology works in a way that people who find the world taking from them (rather than giving more) suspect that they have been using their consciousness and tools the wrong way.
This might be a general rule for intelligent, tool-using species. A conscious being will learn patterns in cause and effect. It learns that if one throws a rock at an animal that’s not too large, the rock knocks out or kills the animal. If one day one tries throwing a rock and the rock bounces off the air and hits the thrower, what does one conclude?
One might think there is something wrong with one’s own mind. Perhaps, one is confused about what was the pattern in the past. Perhaps, one hallucinated the rock bouncing back this time. But for a conscious being, not being able to depend on what one’s mind tells one can be frightening.
One could conclude the world is undependable or malicious. Once a pattern has been perceived, there may be a reluctance to believe the world acts randomly. That could be frightening in the sense that consciousness is not much better than insanity if the world does not follow rules for the mind to understand. Yet a malicious world that will try to harm one, and is beyond one’s power to change, can be even more hopeless.
A species that tends to experience a sense of hopelessness from perceiving the world in these ways could be less likely to survive. When faced with adversity, keeping a hopeful disposition may mean blaming oneself. Believing one has failed to throw the rock correctly gives one the sense trying additional throws can lead to a better result. Finding fault in oneself means one believes the problem rests in that which one has the most control to change.
In one sense, blaming oneself is healthy or hopeful. In a world one has limited control over, there is likely to be a number of experiences of failures. This can lead to self-doubt in at least some individuals. This is a double-edged sword. It may not work in exactly the same way for each species, but it would not be surprising to see it in others.
There is a degree of dichotomy here. One may believe one has not thrown the rock in the desired way, but there is an external world one wants to impact. One may believe one understands how to throw the rock, but feel the arm is not responding exactly right. It would be much better if one could simply think what one wanted and have the rock do it. When it rains too much, it would be nice to tell it to stop and have the rain stop. The desire to think or express a wish and have it fulfilled may be the origins of belief in supernatural powers through which one can influence the world. The dynamics of this psychological element may make prayer common.