Counterintuitiveness as the hallmark of religiosity

Pyysiäinen, Ilkka; Lindeman, Marjaana; Honkela, Timo

doi:10.1016/j.religion.2003.09.001

Cited by 54 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…In a series of studies carried out by Pyysiäinen et al (Pyysiäinen, Lindeman, & Hakela, 2003), counterintuitive statements involving some kind of agent were more likely to be judged as religious than statements involving no agent. In a similar vein, Guthrie (1993) stressed that our cognitive system is biased toward detecting human-like agency in our environment (a hypersensitive agent detection device), triggered whenever sensory data are ambiguous or incomplete.…”

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confidence: 99%

The sacred and the absurd––an electrophysiological study of counterintuitive ideas (at sentence level)

Fondevila

Martı́n-Loeches

Jiménez-Ortega

et al. 2012

Social Neuroscience

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Religious beliefs are both catchy and durable: they exhibit a high degree of adherence to our cognitive system, given their success of transmission and spreading throughout history. A prominent explanation for religion's cultural success comes from the "MCI hypothesis," according to which religious beliefs are both easy to recall and desirable to transmit because they are minimally counterintuitive (MCI). This hypothesis has been empirically tested at concept and narrative levels by recall measures. However, the neural correlates of MCI concepts remain poorly understood. We used the N400 component of the event-related brain potential as a measure of counterintuitiveness of violations comparing religious and non-religious sentences, both counterintuitive, when presented in isolation. Around 80% in either condition were core-knowledge violations. We found smaller N400 amplitudes for religious as compared to non-religious counterintuitive ideas, suggesting that religious ideas are less semantically anomalous. Moreover, behavioral measures revealed that religious ideas are not readily detected as unacceptable. Finally, systematic analyses of our materials, according to conceptual features proposed in cognitive models of religion, did not reveal any outstanding variable significantly contributing to these differences. Refinements of cognitive models of religion should elucidate which combination of factors renders an anomaly less counterintuitive and thus more suitable for recall and transmission.

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

The sacred and the absurd––an electrophysiological study of counterintuitive ideas (at sentence level)

Fondevila

Martı́n-Loeches

Jiménez-Ortega

et al. 2012

Social Neuroscience

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“…As a central theory in the cognitive science of religion, Pascal Boyer's theory of the transmission of counterintuitive ideas has generated considerable theoretical and empirical attention (e.g., Barrett, 2000Barrett, , 2004aBarrett, , 2004bBarrett & Nyhof, 2001;Boyer, 2003;Boyer & Ramble, 2001;Gonce et al 2006;Norenzayan et al 2006;Pyysiäinen, Lindeman & Honkela, 2003;Tremlin, 2006;Tweney et al 2006;Upal, et al, 2007). In brief, Boyer hypothesizes that concepts with a small number of counterintuitive features are (generally) better remembered and more faithfully communicated than extremely counterintuitive concepts or comparable ordinary or even unusual concepts.…”

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confidence: 99%

Coding and Quantifying Counterintuitiveness in Religious Concepts: Theoretical and Methodological Reflections

Barrett

2008

Method Theory Study Religion

131

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Boyer's theory of counterintuitive cultural concept transmission claims that concepts that ideas that violate naturally occurring intuitive knowledge structures enough to be attention-demanding but not so much to undermine conceptual coherence have a transmission advantage over other concepts (Boyer et al. 2001: 535-64). Because of the prominence of these counterintuitive concepts in religious belief systems, Boyer's theory features prominently in many cognitive treatments of religion. Diffi culties in identifying what are and are not counterintuitive concepts in this technical sense, however, has made empirical treatment of Boyer's theory irregular and diffi cult to evaluate. Further, inability to quantify just how counterintuitive a given concept is has made ambiguous specifying where the alleged cognitive optimum lies. Th e present project attempts to clarify Boyer's theory and presents a formal system for coding and quantifying the "counterintuitiveness" of a concept, and hence, facilitates empirical scrutiny of the theory.

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“…Mandatory treatment of people who were sexually stimulated as children by clinicians who believe these behaviors are the cause of all difficulties would be expected to produce an epidemic of iatrogenic populations with long-term deficits. Because belief systems or moral panics (Stevens, 1992;Victor, 1998) that emphasize counterintuitive reasoning (Pyysiainen, Lindeman, & Honkela, 2003) can occur within an entire population, consistency of conclusions by multiple researchers does not necessarily imply validity any more than does the intercultural consistency of attributing strange lights in the sky to extraterrestrial intelligence. Neither reliability nor consensus is synonymous with validity.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Confounding Variables Within “Referral Controls” for Children With Histories of Sexual Stimulation by Adults: Implications for Erroneous Attributions From “Childhood Sexual Abuse”

Persinger

2008

soc behav pers

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Verbal and performance scores from a standardized intelligence battery for age-matched children from four groups (n = 67) were compared to discern if the depressed scores for verbal intelligence displayed by children with histories of verified sexual stimulation by adults were epiphenomenal. The children had been referred to a psychiatric facility because of early sexual stimulation by adults, from a children's mental health service because of family problems, or from a school board for conduct disorders. The fourth group was hospital controls for the first group. The children with nonculturally approved sexual activity with adults and those from the mental health service displayed verbal intelligence scores that were about one SD below the scores for children referred by the school board and for the control group. These results suggest that psychological variables may not reflect a causal relationship and hence group differences should not be attributed exclusively to the diagnosis of sexual abuse.

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Counterintuitiveness as the hallmark of religiosity

Cited by 54 publications

References 38 publications

The sacred and the absurd––an electrophysiological study of counterintuitive ideas (at sentence level)

The sacred and the absurd––an electrophysiological study of counterintuitive ideas (at sentence level)

Coding and Quantifying Counterintuitiveness in Religious Concepts: Theoretical and Methodological Reflections

Confounding Variables Within “Referral Controls” for Children With Histories of Sexual Stimulation by Adults: Implications for Erroneous Attributions From “Childhood Sexual Abuse”

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