One of the key components of the vision of the Brain Preservation Foundation is “a series of social changes in all free societies to ensure that each of us has the option of exercising the brain preservation choice at death, and a series of personal rights around that choice.” Please refer the “Preservation Rights” section of the BPF website for more information about this stance.

Therefore, in addition to measuring technological progress in brain preservation, it would be valuable if we could also track and measure any changes in the views of the broader public towards brain preservation. In June 2015, the BPF performed its first in a series of surveys of the general public on their views related to brain preservation, using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. This blog post will summarize some of the key preliminary findings from the survey, although the most important value of the survey will be its ability to measure any changes in average viewpoints over the coming years and decades.

If you would like to take the survey (please do!) or see the precise questions, please find them here.

Demographics

Participants self-selected for the survey within the Mechanical Turk interface. They were told that it would be a survey of “20 question about brain preservation and/or cryonics.” The majority of participants filled out the survey quickly after it was put up on the site.

Number of Respondents: 298

Age Distribution:

Highest Degree Earned: 40% Bachelor’s; 26% High School; 22.6% Two-Year Degree, 7% Master’s, 2.4% Professional Degree or Ph.D
Percent Female (Cis or Trans): 46.6%
Modal Household Income: $25,000 – $50,000 (35%)
Health Status: 10% Excellent, 29% Very Good, 39% Good, 19% Fair, 3% Poor
Religion, General: 23% Committed Theist, 12% Questioning Theist, 25% Agnostic, 8% Atheist and spiritual, 20% Atheist and not spiritual, 11% Other
Religion, Specific:

Proportion of answers to the question “Do you believe in the afterlife?”

Brain Preservation (BP) Attitudes

 
Percent heard of BP and/or cryonics: 85%
Percent could imagine signing up for BP and/or cryonics: 29%
Percent thinking about signing up (or already signed up): 15%
Average probability assignment that BP and/or cryonics will work: 14.0%
Here is a histogram of the probability assignments that existing methods for BP and/or cryonics will “work” in the average case (out of 298 responses):

In general, the majority of people did not think that if a friend or family member signed up, that they would be more likely to, although a sizeable minority (32%) did:

Answers to the question: “Some people (see Donaldson v. Van de Kamp) have argued that patients with terminal illnesses should be allowed to start brain preservation procedures prior to current legal death, in order to prevent further brain degradation. Do you think this should be allowed?”

Proportion of respondents who either Agree or Strongly Agree that patients with terminal illnesses should be allowed to start brain preservation procedures prior to current legal death: 47.6%

Participants’s Reasons Against Brain Preservation (Regardless of Sign-Up Status) 

We asked participants two questions:

1) What is the main reason that you would not elect brain preservation? and

2) What are other reasons that you would not elect brain preservation?

Based on preliminary data, we gave the following options for each:

– It is too expensive (cryonics currently costs between $30,000 – $200,000) (coded as “Expensive”)
– Long-term instability of the brain preservation organization (“Instability”)
– I don’t know of any scientific validation that the procedure will preserve neural features currently associated with long-term memory and identity (“Procedure”)
– It is a logistical hassle (“Logistics”)
– It is selfish (for example, due to overpopulation) (“Selfish”)
– I am worried about being socially unaccepted/ostracized due to my decision (“Ostracism”)
– I am worried about being revived in an unfavorable condition/state (“Unfavorable”)
– Religious reasons (“Religion”)
– Other/Unsure (“Other”)

We found that the most common main reason to not elect brain preservation was expense. The second most common reason is that the procedure has not been shown to be good enough. The third most common reason is that people are worried about unfavorable outcomes upon potential revival, which is a topic that is not discussed very commonly within the brain preservation and/or cryonics community.

 Relationships Between Demographics and BP Attitudes

We treated the responses as five-level Likert items, which allowed us to measure the relationships between variables.

In general, there were positive correlations between all of the BP-related variables, i.e. answers to “Could you Imagine Signing Up,” “What is Your Sign Up Status,” opinions on BP prior to legal death in the case of terminal illnesses, and probability assessments of current methods working, were all positively correlated (r-squared between 0.29 and 0.63). The strongest correlated variables were between Imagining and one’s Sign-Up status (mostly mediated by people who could imagine it and were thinking about signing up).

Respondents with who were younger than 40 were more likely to imagine signing up (31% vs 26%) and more likely to be thinking about signing up (17% vs 11%), although they were less likely to have heard of it (80% vs 94%).

Respondents with a higher household income (> $50,000) were more likely to imagine signing up (37% vs 25%) and more likely to be thinking about signing up (18% vs 13%), although they assigned a lower probability of the existing procedures working (12% vs 15%).This may reflect the unfortunate current situation in which individuals with relatively lower incomes are less practically able to elect for brain preservation procedures.

Conclusions

Mechanical Turk seems to be a valuable way to elicit attitudes about brain preservation among the general public. In the free-form answer section, many of the respondents indicated that they were interested in brain preservation and wanted to learn more about it. The survey also shows that 32% of respondents would be more likely to elect to sign up if a friend or family member chose to, while 47% of respondents either “Agree” or “Strongly Agree” that initiating brain preservation procedures prior to legal death should be legally allowed.

(Note: this survey was paid for by the personal donations of BPF fellows — no BPF funds were spent on it.)