A new methodological tool for research on supernatural concepts

Sommer, Joseph; Spencer, Chrystal; Musolino, Julien; Hemmer, Pernille

doi:10.3758/s13428-022-01826-3

Cited by 2 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…In the context of CI properties reliably generating IP, it should be emphasized that we are not arguing that violations are irrelevant or that CI characteristics are inert. Violations appear to be reliable generators of IP, as well as bizarreness, and in general, violations produce higher levels of these dimensions than do BIZ characteristics (Sommer, Spencer, et al, 2022). The argument is only that other methods of creating IP do exist and may produce concepts that are highly memorable despite being merely BIZ and not CI.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…1 Differences in IP may also explain why MCI concepts are sometimes remembered better than VR concepts, while other studies find the reverse effect (Atran & Norenzayan, 2005;Barrett & Nyhof, 2001). Paralleling the wide range of IP among CI concepts, Sommer, Spencer, et al (2022) found that BIZ concepts can likewise range from low to high IP. Because past studies do not control for IP when comparing memorability of MCI and BIZ concepts, differences in IP among their stimuli might account for the mixed empirical results.…”

Section: Ipmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…All concepts were drawn from the stimulus set developed and rated by Sommer, Spencer, et al (2022). We selected 12 concepts for each of the six experimental conditions, for a total of 72 concepts used across conditions (all concepts used in the present study may be found at https://osf.io/x5gq3/; see also the supporting information to this article).…”

Section: Materials: Stimulus Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…BIZ and INT concepts with non-agentic nouns, therefore, have uniformly low intentional agency and strategic knowledge (cf. Sommer, Spencer, et al, 2022). CI concepts, on the other hand, achieve high agency across all ontological categories.…”

Section: Materials: Stimulus Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These dimensions werethought provokingness, which was used by Gregory and Barrett (2009) in one of the few studies to control for IP, intentional agency, and possession of strategic knowledge, which Barrett (2008b) suggested as important properties of supernatural concepts. In short, Sommer, Spencer, et al (2022) created a set of 216 concepts, including CI, BIZ, and INT concept types, and had them rated on a number of dimensions including thought provokingness, intentional agency, and strategic knowledge. Rating results indicated that CI and BIZ concepts systematically differ on these dimensions.…”

Section: Materials: Stimulus Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Counterintuitive Concepts Across Domains: A Unified Phenomenon?

2023

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The minimally counterintuitive (MCI) thesis in the cognitive science of religion proposes that supernatural concepts are prevalent across cultures because they possess a common structure—namely, violations of intuitive ontological assumptions that facilitate concept representation. These violations are hypothesized to give supernatural concepts a memorability advantage over both intuitive concepts and “maximally counterintuitive” (MXCI) concepts, which contain numerous ontological violations. However, the connection between MCI concepts and bizarre (BIZ) but not supernatural concepts, for which memorability advantages are predicted by the von Restorff (VR) effect, has been insufficiently clarified by earlier research. Additionally, the role of inferential potential (IP) in determining MCI concepts’ memorability has remained vague and only rarely controlled for. In a pre‐registered experiment, we directly compare memorability for MCI and MXCI concepts, compared to BIZ concepts, while controlling for IP as well as degree of bizarreness. Results indicate that when IP and bizarreness are controlled for, memorability of counterintuitive and BIZ concepts—relative to intuitive control concepts—is similar across concepts with one, two, and three characteristics. Findings suggest that the MCI and VR effects may be manifestations of the same underlying mechanisms.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Ipmentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Materials: Stimulus Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Materials: Stimulus Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Materials: Stimulus Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Counterintuitive Concepts Across Domains: A Unified Phenomenon?

2023

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BERTAgent: The Development of a Novel Tool to Quantify Agency in Textual Data

Nikadon¹,

Suitner²,

Erseghe³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Agency, pertaining to goal-orientation and achievement, is a fundamental aspect of human cognition and behavior. Accordingly, detecting and quantifying linguistic representations of agency is critical for the analysis of human actions, interactions, and social dynamics. Available agency-quantifying computational tools rely on word-counting methods, which are insensitive to the semantic context in which the words are used and consequently are inaccurate in case of polysemy and negation. Additionally, some currently available tools fail to account for differences in the intensity and directionality (valence) of agency. In order to overcome these shortcomings, we present BERTAgent, a novel tool to quantify semantic agency in text. BERTAgent is a computational language model that utilizes the transformers architecture, a popular deep learning approach to natural language processing. BERTAgent was fine-tuned using carefully selected textual data that were evaluated by human coders with respect to the level of conveyed agency. In five validation studies, we demonstrate that BERTAgent outperforms previous solutions in terms of convergent and discriminant validity. Additionally, the detailed description of BERTAgent’s development procedure serves as a tutorial for the advancement of similar tools, providing a blueprint for leveraging the existing lexicographical datasets in conjunction with the deep learning techniques in order to detect and quantify other psychological constructs in textual data.🔗 https://pypi.org/project/bertagent/🔗 https://bertagent.readthedocs.io/🔗 https://github.com/cogsys-io/BERTAgent-SOM/🔗 https://github.com/cogsys-io/bertagent/

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A new methodological tool for research on supernatural concepts

Cited by 2 publications

References 42 publications

Counterintuitive Concepts Across Domains: A Unified Phenomenon?

Counterintuitive Concepts Across Domains: A Unified Phenomenon?

BERTAgent: The Development of a Novel Tool to Quantify Agency in Textual Data

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