The aims of the pilot study were to test our experimental paradigm and dependent variables. However, we did also expect to find a positive association between theory of mind (ToM) capacities and condemnation of mind upload scenarios (Ward et al., 2013). Furthermore, since the theme of uploading one’s consciousness to a silicon-based medium is often discussed and associated with 'rationality activists' clustering around the popular blog LessWrongFootnote 6 we included (as exploratory measures) two scales assessing individual variation in tendencies towards rationality.Footnote 7 We also included the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ; Haidt and Graham, 2007), which is the most widely used psychometric tool assessing individual differences in moral preferences. Finally, we included measures on perceived vulnerability to diseases (PVD; Duncan et al., 2009), because some elements in our study vignettes (i.e., nano-machines) could be perceived as alien disease vectors (for details, see the story description below and Appendix SI Text 1 for the full version). Another reason to include PVD was a recent study showing a strong link between PVD and the MFQ Purity scale (Laakasuo et al., 2017); the PVD scale might thus have relevance to moral cognition in other contexts as well.

Method

Ethics statement

All local laws regarding ethics for social science research were followed in full in all studies. All participation was fully voluntary and participants were informed about their right to opt out at any point without penalties. Materials used and a study protocol were reviewed and approved by the University of Helsinki Ethical Review Board in Humanities and Social and Behavioural Sciences.

Participants and design

In total, 268 participants recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) successfully completed a correlational questionnaire prepared with Qualtrics (N = 268; 161 female; Age M = 31.63; SD = 10.92; Range = 18–72). All participants were US residents, and compensated US $1.50. The median income of our participants was in the range of $40 000–45 000. Our participants reported their socio-economic status level (SES) using an 9-point scale ladder indicating how they felt they were positioned with respect to other Americans in overall education, income, and status (M = 5.00, SD = 1.58). Of our participants, 139 had obtained at least a Bachelor’s degree. Research has shown that the quality of data gathered using MTurk is of no less quality than studies ran in laboratory environments (Horton et al., 2011; Paolacci et al., 2010).

Procedure and materials

Participants first gave informed consent and then filled in scales in the following order: Reading the Mind in The Eyes Task (Baron-Cohen et al., 2001), MFQ (Haidt and Graham, 2007), Three Domain Disgust Scale (Tybur et al., 2009), Religiosity Scale (see description below) and Science Fiction Hobbyism Scale (manuscript in preparation). Thereafter the participants read a story about a scientist who successfully transfers his consciousness (uploads his mind) onto a computer. The story was modeled after a description sketched by Hans Moravec (1988).

In the story, the scientist injects himself with nano-machines that enter his brain and substitute his neurons one-by-one. After a neuron has been substituted, the functioning of that neuron is copied (uploaded) on a computer; and after each neuron has been copied/uploaded the nano-machines shut down, and the scientist’s body falls on the ground completely limp. Finally, the scientist wakes up inside the computer.

After reading the story the participants responded to the dependent variables, which were shown on the same page as the story (the participants could refer back to the story if needed). Finally, the participants answered demographic and other background questions, and were debriefed and thanked.

Reading the mind in the eyes (RMET) task

This task was developed by Baron-Cohen and colleagues (2001), and is usually employed as a measure of individual ToM capacity. ToM capacity predicts empathetic behaviour and the ability to take another person’s perspective. The task consists of 32 close-up pictures of people’s eyes portraying an emotion. Participants are given four options of emotion words to choose from, only one of which is the one that actually corresponds to the emotional tone of the eyes. Higher scores indicate higher theory of mind capacity, or empathizing ability (the scores also work as a performance measure of emotional intelligence).

Perceived vulnerability to diseases (PVD)

The PVD scale measures individual differences in disease sensitivity (Duncan et al., 2009), and has two sub-scales: Perceived Infectability and Germ Aversion. Both sub-scales ask participants to rate how well a set of sentences describes them, on a scale from '1' (not at all) to '7' (very well). Perceived Infectability correlates with health-related anxieties and hypochondria. It is related to future fears of being ill and is specific to infectious diseases, but not to current or past health concerns (Duncan et al., 2009). It correlates with rational beliefs and predictions related to pathogens. For instance, individuals with immune system deficiencies (e.g., the elderly) typically score high on the scale. An example item is: 'If an illness is “going around”, I will get it'. The scale has three reverse coded items (e.g., 'My immune system protects me from most illnesses that other people get.'). The Perceived Infectability sub-scale had good internal reliability (7 items, α = .90). Higher scores indicate higher perceived infectability.

Germ Aversion measures individual anxiety related to situations with elevated risk of pathogen transmission. The scale correlates with disgust sensitivity and is related to intuitive assessment of perceived risks of contracting a disease in social settings. Individuals with high germ aversion intuitively avoid people with morphological abnormalities. An example item is: 'It really bothers me when people sneeze without covering their mouths'. The scale has three reverse coded items (e.g., 'My hands do not feel dirty after touching money.'), and had a satisfactory internal reliability in our sample (8 items, α = .79). Higher scores indicate higher germ aversion.

Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ)

The MFQ measures individual variation in the foundations of 'intuitive ethics' (Graham et al., 2011). It is based on a model for five separate moral foundations: care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation. The MFQ has two parts. In the first part, the respondent is asked to rate how relevant various considerations (16 in total) are when deciding whether something is right or wrong, on a scale from '1' (not at all relevant) to '7' (extremely relevant). Example items are 'Whether or not someone suffered emotionally' (care/harm), and 'Whether or not someone violated standards of purity and decency' (sanctity/degradation). In the second part, the respondent rates his/her agreement with 16 statements on a scale from '1' (strongly disagree) to '7' (strongly agree). Example items are 'Compassion for those who are suffering is the most crucial virtue' (care/harm), and 'Chastity is an important and valuable virtue' (sanctity/degradation). High (or low) scores on specific sub-scales indicate high (or low) relevance for said sub-scale in an individual’s intuitive moral foundation or 'code of conduct'. The Cronbach’s alpha values for all sub-scales were .69 for harm/care, .64 for fairness/cheating, .73 for loyalty/betrayal, .73 for authority/subversion and .80 for purity/sanctity.

Science Fiction Hobbyism Scale

This scale is currently under development. It consists of 12 items and measures individuals’ cultural exposure to various science fiction themes. It has items such as 'I consider myself a major consumer of science fiction' and 'I think science fiction is an interesting topic'. All the questions were anchored from '1' (strongly disagree) to '7' (strongly agree). Higher scores indicate higher science fiction hobbyism and exposure to science fiction themes. In the current sample, the scale had good psychometric properties (all factor loadings > .57; Cronbach’s alpha = .92). For full statistics and a listing of the scale items, see Appendix Tables A5-A8.

Religiosity Scale

We created this scale by compiling together 15 items. The scale measures individual differences in level of personal religious practice and commitment (see Appendix for detailed psychometric validation). Participants were shown statements and asked to evaluate their importance in their lives on a scale from '1' (not at all important) to '7' (very important). Example items are: 'Praying regularly' or 'Belonging to church or some other religious persuasion'. The scale had excellent internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = .96). Higher scores indicate higher levels of religiosity (for full listing of items and further psychometric analyses, see Appendix Tables A9-A11).

Rational-experiential inventory (REI)

The REI measures individual dispositions in two distinct thinking styles (Pacini and Epstein, 1999). The questionnaire consists of two orthogonal sub-scales labelled Rational and Experiential. Both sub-scales have 20 items and had excellent internal consistencies in our sample (Cronbach’s alphas = .91 and .93 for Rational and Experiential, respectively). All items were anchored from '1' (strongly disagree) to '7' (strongly agree). The Rational sub-scale measures engagement in and enjoyment of cognitive activities, with higher scores indicating greater engagement and enjoyment. The Experiential sub-scale is the 'intuitive' counterpart of the Rational sub-scale, and measures faith in and reliance on initial impressions, with higher scores indicating greater faith and reliance. The REI has such items as 'I have no problem thinking things through carefully' (Rational) and 'I like to rely on my intuitive impressions' (Experiential). About half of the items in both sub-scales are reverse-coded, including 'Thinking is not my idea of an enjoyable activity' (Rational) and 'If I were to rely on my gut feelings, I would often make mistakes' (Experiential).

Dependent variable/disapproval of mind upload

Our dependent variable consisted of 10 items, which were averaged together. Eight of the items were anchored from '1' (completely disagree) to '7' (completely agree), for example: 'I found the scientist’s actions to be irresponsible' and 'What the scientist did should be illegal'. One of these eight items was reverse coded (The scientist who makes progress in developing technologies like this should be rewarded). Two items were anchored from '1' (not at all) to '7' (very much): 'How immoral did you find the scientist’s actions to be?' and 'How acceptable did you find the scientist’s actions to be?'. The DV had a strong single factor structure and acceptable internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = .89). Higher scores indicate higher rates of disapproval of mind upload technologies (for full details of the items and psychometric analyses in our pilot study see the Appendix Tables A1-A4).

Pilot study Results

We ran a multiple regression analysis by first building a baseline model with age and gender as covariates; and then sequentially adding covariates as follows. Second model: level of education and socioeconomic status. Third model: Religiosity Scale and Science Fiction Hobbyism scale. Fourth model: Reading the Mind in the Eyes task. Fifth model: Moral Foundations Questionnaire as a whole. Finally, in the sixth and seventh models we sequentially dropped all non-significant covariates (for full statistics see Table 1).

Table 1 Multiple regression analysis for the pilot study predicting condemnation of the scientist’s actions who uploaded his consciousness into a computer Full size table

Our results suggest that cultural factors play a significant role in understanding the condemnation of mind upload: the scales measuring religiosity and science fiction hobbyism were strong predictors of disapproval and approval of mind upload, respectively (Models 3–7). Interestingly, level of education, SES, gender, and the RMET were not associated with condemning the scientist’s actions in the story.

Surprisingly, two sub-scales from the MFQ were associated with approval and disapproval of the events described in the story (Fairness and Purity; Model 5). However, after removing non-significant variables from the analysis, only Purity remained statistically significant (together with science fiction hobbyism and religiosity; Models 5–7).

Additional pilot study analyses

Laakasuo et al. (2017) suggested that the PVD scale produces similar results in intergroup altruistic helping situations than the MFQ Purity sub-scale. In our exploratory analysis we entered both of the PVD sub-scales into the same analysis (see Table 1, Model 7); however neither of the PVD sub-scales were statistically significant predictors (Bs < 0.1, |t| < 1.2, ps = n.s.). This suggests that, in the story, the nano-machines being injected in the scientist’s bloodstream were not considered as disease vectors by our participants, and that in this context PVD has no relevance for moral cognition.

Some visible advocates for mind upload technologies are clustered around a popular online community called LessWrong (www.lesswrong.com). In this community the main focus point is in increasing the potential for human rationality and rational action. We therefore evaluated whether or not the approval of mind upload technology is related to individual differences in rationality-related thinking styles. We entered both REIFootnote 8 scales into the analysis without any other variables, but only the Rationality sub-scale was statistically significant (B = −0.19, 95% CI [−0.34, −0.04], p = .01). Further probing, however, revealed that the effect disappeared after entering the MFQ Purity variable into the analysis. This analysis suggests that rationality does play a role in adopting a positive attitude towards mind upload technology, but the effects are probably dependent on deeper cognitive structures associated with Purity orientations, which, in turn, are associated with the emotion of disgust. Thus, low levels of individual disgust sensitivity—instead of high levels of rational thought—might explain the approval of mind upload (see Studies 2 and 3).

Pilot study Discussion

The results of our pilot study indicate that the stimulus material is appropriate to study condemnation of mind upload. Higher religiosity was associated with higher levels of condemnation, whereas higher levels of science fiction hobbyism—which are culturally relevant factors—were associated with higher levels of acceptance of mind upload technology, when both variables were included in the same model simultaneously.

The central implications of the Pilot Study are: (1) cultural factors seem to be very important for the formation of attitudes related to the approval or disapproval of mind upload technology, and (2) given the independent link between condemnation of mind upload and MFQ Purity, even after controlling for religiosity and science fiction hobbyism, the emotion of disgust might also be implicated in the current setting. MFQ Purity has been associated with the emotion of disgust in several recent studies (Laakasuo et al., 2017; Chapman and Anderson, 2014), and it is consistently associated with moral concerns in other domains as well. However, our exploratory analysis seems to imply that these attitudes for condemning mind upload are not related to pathogen components of disgust (PVD), but possibly to more abstract forms of disgust sensitivity; we return to this question in Study 2. The results also alluded to a link between the MFQ Fairness-Reciprocity sub-scale and condemnation of mind upload; however, we could not replicate this effect (see subsequent Studies) and therefore concluded it was probably a false positive (there were 12 variables included in the analysis, and the probability of finding at least one false positive, with the p = .05 criterion, is 1–0.95^12 = ~46% while the expected number of false positives with 12 variables is 0.05*12 = 0.6).

Surprisingly, there were no associations between RMET scores and condemnation of mind upload. This implies that while ToM capacities might be necessary for us to form intuitions about souls and spirits, ToM alone is unrelated to the moral condemnation of uploading one’s mind onto a different platform (for similar findings in context of supernatural beliefs, see Lindeman et al., 2015).