Cognitive constraints and counterintuitiveness: a new account of the memorability of supernatural concepts

In this dissertation, I propose and test a novel account of the memorability of supernatural concepts. Pascal Boyer’s influential minimally counterintuitive (MCI) theory (2001) proposed that supernatural concepts are prevalent across cultures because they take advantage of cognitive mechanisms optimized for representing and recalling natural concepts. In short, all concepts, natural and supernatural, are theorized to rely on intuitive ontological theories, such as intuitive physics, biology, and psychology, which support concept representation. In contrast to natural concepts, supernatural concepts possess characteristics that violate these intuitive ontological theories, which make them more memorable and transmissible than natural concepts. However, too many such violations reduce supernatural concepts’ abilities to draw on the intuitive ontological theories at all, causing them to lose this advantage. Thus, there is a cognitive optimum for concepts that are minimally counterintuitive, possessing a few, but not too many violations of intuitive ontological theories. I propose that MCI theory's main predictions can be accounted for by known memory mechanisms and do not require the novel mechanism of ontological violations. My account implicates several mechanisms which contribute to supernatural concepts’ cultural success. First, the von Restorff (1933) effect predicts improved memorability for outlier or bizarre items, such as concepts with supernatural characteristics. Second is inferential potential - a longstanding construct in the MCI literature invoked to explain differences in memorability between supernatural concepts - may also explain supernatural concepts’ increased memorability relative to natural concepts. In particular, inferential potential may be closely related to the animacy effect in memory (Nairne et al. 2013), where agents are better recalled than non-agents. Finally, rather than concepts with many supernatural characteristics suffering due to their many ontological violations, these concepts are proposed to be low in coherability. That is, because supernatural characteristics often have nothing in common with one another, they are difficult to retain in memory. Chapter 1 reviews the literature on MCI theory and proposes a novel account of the memorability of supernatural concepts. This account explains the MCI memorability effect via known memory mechanisms and can address certain puzzling findings in the literature which pose problems for the traditional account. Chapter 2 presents the first major attempt to operationalize inferential potential, which has largely gone undefined and uncontrolled for in MCI studies. Inferential potential rating studies find preliminary support for my novel account of MCI concepts. Chapter 3 experimentally tests the memorability of supernatural and bizarre (von Restorff) concepts with matched levels of inferential potential, finding further evidence for the alternative account. Chapter 4 compares the coherability of natural and supernatural concepts generated by experimental participants and assesses memorability for concepts high and low in coherability.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference