A Cognitive Framework for Understanding Counterintuitive Stories

Stories containing counterintuitive concepts are prevalent in a variety of cultural forms including folktales, TV and radio commercials, and religious parables. Cognitive scientists such as Boyer suggest that this may be because counterintuitive concepts are surprising and more memorable for people and therefore are more likely to become widespread in a culture. How and why people remember such concepts has been subject of some debate. This paper presents studies designed to test predictions of the context-based model of counterintuitive story understanding