Ideas that compel action are more contagious than true ones

Evidence

Take for example, the idea that misfortune, such as getting struck by a debilitating illness, is random—it can happen to anyone, anytime, without logic or purpose. This is not a very memorable or popular idea, because it doesn’t lead to useful or helpful inferences or actions. Even if true, knowing this fact wouldn’t change what we do. In contrast, the folk notion that illnesses are caused by the curse or jealousy of others, or by the wrath of God, is a powerful piece of information that compels further thinking and action. It tells us to be careful about other people who might not have our best interests in their hearts, or to hide our successes from them, or to obey God’s will without question, and so on. Ideas that compel action tend to be contagious. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 360

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Directly grounds why supernatural explanations of suffering (God’s wrath, jealousy curses) outcompete purely secular accident accounts — feeds the analytical bridge for apostasy and divine punishment logic in the reader’s framework.
• QUESTION: This contradicts the ‘true beliefs win in the marketplace’ intuition — worth tracing how action-compelling supernatural error crowds out accurate but inert belief.

Related

• Ideas survive by generating useful inferences, not by being true (similarity 0.86)

Broader Connections

• Emotional content propagates ideas more than factual accuracy does #corroborates (0.92) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 359