Mildly counterintuitive content boosts cultural transmission of ideas

Evidence

Beliefs that radically depart from common sense don’t readily transmit, but this does not imply that more intuitive ideas are always better candidates for cultural survival. In fact, the presence of mildly counterintuitive content in concepts or narratives can bias memory in a manner that appears to favor such concepts or narratives in cultural evolution. Counterintuitive concepts or events violate our core assumption about the nature of things in the world, usually about intentional beings, animals, inanimate objects, or events. By departing systematically, but mildly, from established cognitive rules we use to understand and organize information in our environment, these concepts achieve greater memorability. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 362

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A culture’s store of cautionary stories shapes its consumption behavior — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 641