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Extraterrestrial Altruism pp 275–294Cite as

Patterns of Extraterrestrial Culture

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Abstract

Much psychiatric literature concerns problems that affect an individual’s ability to feel compassion toward others, and thus to behave at least occasionally in an altruistic manner. To the extent that extraterrestrial societies differ in their psychology, much of that variation ought to be comparable to the range of personalities exhibited by humans, including the psychopathologies. A classical perspective that combined anthropology with psychiatry was culture and personality studies, which now can be revived in the context of theorizing about the modal personalities of extraterrestrial cultures. This study explores these issues through the rich, role-playing experience afforded by the massively multiplayer online game world, Star Wars: The Old Republic. The user interacts with many very different personality types, represented by both primary and secondary avatars, many of which are simulated extraterrestrials.

The views expressed in this essay do not necessarily represent the views of the National Science Foundation or the United States.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IIS Division, National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA, 22203, USA

    William Sims Bainbridge

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  1. William Sims Bainbridge
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Correspondence to William Sims Bainbridge .

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  1. SETI Institute Director of Interstellar Message Composi, Mountain View, California, USA

    Douglas A. Vakoch

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Bainbridge, W.S. (2014). Patterns of Extraterrestrial Culture. In: Vakoch, D. (eds) Extraterrestrial Altruism. The Frontiers Collection. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-37750-1_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-37750-1_18

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