An important thing to remember is that we don't have any clue as to how life might evolve in non-terrestrial environments. Life (and humankind) arose in a VERY specific way here on Earth, and it was mostly due to a mixture of pure chance and the snowball effect. If there is any intelligent life out there, there's no guarantee that it will be the same type of intelligence as humans, ants, dinosaurs, or protozoa. They could be something completely different, evolving and thriving in ways that we can't even comprehend.

With that in mind, I don't think there's any way to really make the kind of prediction you're asking for. If, by some miracle, there is a race of aliens out there similar to human beings, they would probably have the same type of society-wide speculation of extra-terrestrial life that we have. It would be a kind of mirror effect.

Now, with the circumstances you provided in mind, another answerer has answered it pretty well. Simply put, there is no way with modern technology that we can directly "view" an extrasolar planet. We would need planet-sized telescopes. Even the closest stars would require a telescope of that magnitude. Viewing a planet hundreds of thousands of lightyears away is practically inconceivable. Of course, this all might change due to some breakthrough in telescope technology, but we can't just make that assumption.