How would humans and society react to a superhero existing and saving the earth?

This is going to be a test run of hard-science, social science edition. This is in accordance with http://meta.worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/2348/8914.

Okay, so a meteor is about to hit the earth, all our efforts to stop it failed, but a super-man like character saves the day by punching it away*. He then returns to Earth, to find a bunch of reporters trying to interview him.

How would individuals and society react.

We will say that he is basically a human, the only exception being his powers. Also, his social skills are that of the average human.

Now here is the hard part. Citing relevant scientific literature that relates to human behavior (check psychology and sociology), extrapolate your answer based off scientific research.

Notes about this type of question:
Obviously, there are no psychological on actual superheros, but there isn't any physics research on actual Type II civilizations influencing accretion rates. The top answer extrapolated based on current knowledge how it could be done. An answer for this would extrapolate research on human behavior as to they would react to this scenario.

^{*Not necessarily hard-science with respect to physics. (It could be, but we aren't dealing with that for now.)}

posted over 9 years ago

PyRulez‭

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