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Memory and Belief in the Transmission of Counterintuitive Content

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Abstract

Cognitive scientists have increasingly turned to cultural transmission to explain the widespread nature of religion. One key hypothesis focuses on memory, proposing that that minimally counterintuitive (MCI) content facilitates the transmission of supernatural beliefs. We propose two caveats to this hypothesis. (1) Memory effects decrease as MCI concepts become commonly used, and (2) people do not believe counterintuitive content readily; therefore additional mechanisms are required to get from memory to belief. In experiments 1–3 (n = 283), we examined the relationship between MCI, belief, and memory. We found that increased tendencies to anthropomorphize predicted poorer memory for anthropomorphic-MCI content. MCI content was found less believable than intuitive content, suggesting different mechanisms are required to explain belief. In experiment 4 (n = 70), we examined the non-content-based cultural learning mechanism of credibility-enhancing displays (CREDs) and found that it increased participants’ belief in MCI content, suggesting this type of learning can better explain the transmission of belief.

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Notes

  1. Prodigies are anecdotes or microstories about transgressions in the natural order of the cosmos. Prodigies were reported to the Senate, who decided which were genuine and should be recorded.

  2. Elsewhere we have hypothesized that most religious concepts, and concepts that are labeled as MCI, are actually supported by core intuitions about the world rather than being violations of those intuitions (Purzycki & Willard 2015; Willard & Norenzayan 2013).

  3. Since each story could be intuitive, anthropomorphic-MCI, or physical-MCI, and story type was randomized, the total number of concepts did not differ across content type even though it did differ by story.

  4. Using a multilevel logistic regression with random intercepts for each individual we can show that these effects do not change when we control for age, gender, ethnicity, and religious affiliation. MCI items are significantly more memorable than intuitive items after 5 min (z = 4.98, p < 0.001; Odds: 1.77, 95%CI: 1.41 to 2.21) and one week (z = 3.51, p < 0.001; Odds: 1.66, 95%CI: 1.25 to 2.21). Belief was similarly modeled. Belief changed an average of −3.08 (95 % CI −3.39 to −2.77; t 81.00 = −19.46, p < 0.001, d = −9.26) points on a seven-point scale between intuitive items and MCI items after 5 min, and −3.46 (95%CI: −3.60 to −3.32; t 165.40 = −49.53, p < 0.001) after one week.

  5. Using a multilevel model with random intercepts for each individual, belief is associated with a change of −1.59 (95%CI: −1.67 to −1.39; t 105.29 = −15.65; p < 0.001) points on a seven-point scale when comparing MCI and intuitive stories after 5 min, and an average of −1.58 (95%CI: −1.85 to −1.32; t 118.70 = 11.77, p < 0.001) points on seven-point scale after 1 week.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Benjamin Purzycki and Adam Baimel for their helpful comments. JH would like to thank the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and NYU’s Stern School of Business. AN acknowledges support from a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant (435-2014-0456). We also thank the Cultural Evolution of Religion Research Consortium, funded by a generous partnership grant (895-2011-1009) also from SSHRC.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, 116 Inner Campus Dr Stop G6000, Austin, TX, 78712-0187, USA

    Aiyana K. Willard

  2. Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Joseph Henrich

  3. Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Ara Norenzayan

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  1. Aiyana K. Willard
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Correspondence to Aiyana K. Willard.

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Willard, A.K., Henrich, J. & Norenzayan, A. Memory and Belief in the Transmission of Counterintuitive Content. Hum Nat 27, 221–243 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-016-9259-6

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