Role of Context in the Recall of Counterintuitive Concepts (original) (raw)
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Cognitive Science, 2001
Presents results of free-recall experiments conducted in France, Gabon and Nepal, to test predictions of a cognitive model of religious concepts. The world over, these concepts include violations of conceptual expectations at the level of domain knowledge (e.g., about 'animal' or 'artifact' or 'person') rather than at the basic level. In five studies we used narratives to test the hypothesis that domain-level violations are recalled better than other conceptual associations. These studies used material constructed in the same way as religious concepts, but not used in religions familiar to the subjects. Experiments 1 and 2 confirmed a distinctiveness effect for such material. Experiment 3 shows that recall also depends on the possibility to generate inferences from violations of domain expectations. Replications in Gabon (Exp. 4) and Nepal (Exp. 5) showed that recall for domain-level violations is better than for violations of basic-level expectations. Overall sensitivity to violations is similar in different cultures and produces similar recall effects, despite differences in commitment to religious belief, in the range of local religious concepts or in their mode of transmission. However, differences between Gabon and Nepal results suggest that familiarity with some types of domain-level violations may paradoxically make other types more salient. These results suggest that recall effects may account for the recurrent features found in religious concepts from different cultures.
Minimally Counterintuitive Concepts: A Unified Theory In the Cognitive Science of Religion
Routledge Handbook of Evolutionary Approaches to religion, 2022
Traditional cognitive scientists of religion (CSR) have argued that memorability for minimally counterintuitive concepts is a distinct phenomenon unconnected with distinctiveness effect and the von restorff effect. I argue that this assumption flies in the face of cognitive science bias towards unified theories of cognition which dictates that we should assume that two similar seeming behaviors arise from the same cognitive processes unless we have strong evidence to believe otherwise. Furthermore, the traditional CSR approach is unable to explain the success of some of the most widespread religious beliefs such as the belief in God or spread of religious concepts (such as NRM beliefs) in the modern world. The context-based model not only redeems the historical and sociocultural study of religion as an essential complement for a cognitive science of religion, but it also provides a systematic way of integrating the two in developing a truly scientific approach to the study of religion.
A number of anthropologists have argued that religious concepts are minimally counterintuitive and that this gives them mnemic advantages. This paper addresses the question of why people have the memory architecture that results in such concepts being more memorable than other types of concepts by pointing out the benefits of a memory structure that leads to better recall for minimally counterintuitive concepts and by showing how such benefits emerge in the real-time processing of comprehending narratives such as folk tales. This model suggests that memorability is not an inherent property of a concept; rather it is a property of the concept, the context in which the concept is presented, and the background knowledge that the comprehendor possesses about the concept. The model predicts how memorability of a concept should change if the context containing the concept were changed. The paper also presents the results of experiments carried out to test these predictions.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 2013
What is ‘counterintuitive’? There is general agreement that it refers to a violation of previously held knowledge, but the precise definition seems to vary with every author and study. The aim of this paper is to deconstruct the notion of ‘counterintuitive’ and provide a more philosophically rigorous definition congruent with the history of psychology, recent experimental work in ‘minimally counterintuitive’ concepts, the science vs. religion debate, and the developmental and evolutionary background of human beings. We conclude that previous definitions of counterintuitiveness have been flawed and did not resolve the conflict between a believer’s conception of the supernatural entity (an atypical “real kind”) and the non-believer’s conception (empty name/fictional). Furthermore, too much emphasis has been placed on the universality and (presumed) innateness of intuitive concepts (and hence the criteria for what is counterintuitive)—and far too little attention paid to learning and expertise. We argue that many putatively universal concepts are not innate, but mostly learned and defeasible—part of a religious believer’s repertoire of expert knowledge. Nonetheless, the results from empirical studies about the memorability of counterintuitive concepts have been convincing and it is difficult to improve on existing designs and methodologies. However, future studies in counterintuitive concepts need to embed their work in research about context effects, typicality, the psychology of learning and expertise (for example, the formation of expert templates and range defaults), with more attention to the sources of knowledge (direct and indirect knowledge) and a better idea of what ‘default’ knowledge really is.
2013
Many religious ideas have attributes that violate our expectations about the state of the natural world. It has been argued that minimal counter-intuitiveness (MCI), defined as a mild violation of innate (ontological) expectations, makes such ideas memorable and prone to cultural transmission. Empirical studies have examined memory for concepts that violate innate ontological expectations; however the memorability of ideas that defy cultural or learned expectations has been (with few exceptions) overlooked. In our study, we compared memory for ideas that violate intuitive ontologies, learned expectations, and everyday, intuitive ideas. We discuss the mnemonic advantage of minimally counterintuitive ideas in terms of a combination of associative strength and bizarreness.
The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2020
Within the cognitive science of religion, some scholars hypothesize (1) that minimally counterintuitive (MCI) concepts enjoy a transmission advantage over both intuitive and highly counterintuitive concepts, (2) that religions concern counterintuitive agents, objects, or events, and (3) that the transmission advantage of MCI concepts makes them more likely to be found in the world's religions than other kinds of concepts. We hypothesized that the memorability of many MCI supernatural concepts was due in large part to other characteristics they possess, such as their frequent and salient association with moral concerns and the alleviation of existential anxieties, and that without such characteristics they would fail to be memorable. We report the results of three experiments designed to test the relative contributions of minimal counterintuitiveness, moral valence, and existential anxiety to the memorability of supernatural ideas. We observed no main effects for minimal counterintuitiveness but did observe main effects for both moral valence and existential anxiety. We also found that these effects did not seem to stem from the greater visualizability of morally valenced concepts or concepts that concerned existential anxieties. These findings challenge important claims made by leading researchers regarding MCI concepts within the cognitive science of religion.
Why Stickiness is not Enough to Explain Persistence of Counterintuitive Religious Concepts
Cognitive scientists of religion argue that religious ideas are widespread because they are minimally counterintuitive. Traditional lab studies have found support for a better memory for minimally counterintuitive concepts. This paper presents an in-depth case study of the spread of a counterintuitive religious idea in the real world. It finds that counterintuitiveness alone is not sufficient to guarantee persistence of a religious belief. Novel religious beliefs have to be painstakingly woven into the cultural fabric of a group’s shared social identity to ensure its survival.
The Experimental Investigation of Religious Cognition
2006
Religious cognition may be defined as the cognitive processes and representational states involved in religion-related knowledge, beliefs and attitudes, behaviours, and experience. Religious content and information processing occurs both at an intellectual, propositional level and also at an affect-laden, implicational level. Many questions are unanswered in our understanding of religious cognition, but fundamental to them all is the question of how religious cognition can be measured. Psychology of religion has primarily used questionnaires to measure religious belief, but many limitations suggest the need for new methods that can tap into implicational religious cognition, such as God schemas, as well as propositional religious cognition, such as God concepts. The purpose of this investigation was to explore which experimental paradigms most successfully tap into implicational religious cognition, and thereby add a new set of measurement tools to those available to the psychologist of religion. A consideration of research into the schematic representation of self and other persons suggested multiple hypotheses that could be tested using experimental paradigms adapted from the social cognition and cognition and emotion literatures. I present findings from a series of five experiments that measured cognitive biases in attention, memory, and judgement speed that were hypothesized to result from implicational religious cognition. Two experiments adapted the emotional Stroop paradigm to explore the possibility of a religious Stroop effect. While evangelical Christians, non-evangelical Christians, and atheists did not differ in interference when colour-naming emotionally valent religious material, in a subsequent unexpected recall test evangelicals showed enhanced recall for religious but not control material. Three experiments adapted the self-reference effect paradigm to investigate the accessibility and centrality of God schemas relative to self-schemas. Though evangelical and non-evangelical Christians had relatively similar propositional beliefs about the character of God, the pattern of evangelicals’ speed in making God-referent judgements and subsequent recall of God-referent material suggested that their God schemas were better-elaborated, more efficient, and more affect-laden than those of non-evangelicals. Atheists were able to draw consistently on two different concepts of God, but did so slowly and with poor subsequent recall, indicating that their God schemas were poorly elaborated, inefficient, and affect-free. Though much research exploring these biases is still to be done, the findings of the current investigation suggest that incidental memory and judgement speed paradigms are successful in tapping into implicational religious cognition and can reveal differences not otherwise observable through more direct measurement.
An alternative account of the minimal counterintuitiveness effect
This paper outlines two approaches to account for the finding that concepts that are minimally counterintuitive are better remembered than intuitive or maximally counterintuitive concepts. The first approach considers such memory advantages to be a property of the concepts themselves while the second approach emphasizes the role played by the context in which such concepts appear in allowing a reader to make sense of them. The context-based view also suggests that counterintuitive concepts lose their advantages as they become widely accepted and embedded in a cultural milieu. In the new context, ideas with enhanced counterintuitiveness obtain transmission advantages. This ratcheting up of counterintuitiveness helps explain cultural innovation and dynamism. It also allows us to account for the development and spread of complex cultural ideas such as the overly counterintuitive religious concepts including the Judeo–Christian–Islamic conceptions of God.
2010
On Attractiveness of Surprising Ideas: How Memory for Counterintuitive Ideas Drives Cultural Dynamics M. Afzal Upal (Afzal.Upal@drdc-rddc.gc.ca) Adversarial Intent Section Defence Research & Development Canada (DRDC) Toronto 1133 Sheppard Ave W, Toronto, M3M 3B9 While a number of subsequent empirical studies (Atran, 2004; J. Barrett & Nyhof, 2001; Boyer & Ramble, 2001; Gonce, Upal, Slone, & Tweney, 2006; Upal, 2005a; Upal, Gonce, Tweney, & Slone, 2007) have found some support for better memory for the MCI concepts, some cultural scientists (Bloch, 2005; Harris & Koenig, 2002; Keller, 2004) have argued that a number of widespread religious concepts such as Gods and ghosts are maximally counterintuitive and not minimally counterintuitive as implied by the minimal counterintuitiveness hypothesis. Some cognitive scientists of religion (J. L. Barrett, 1997, 1999; J. L. Barrett & Keil, 1996; Slone, 2004) have responded by suggesting that this is because believers hold two different (“theo...