Supernatural agents’ minimal counterintuitiveness explains their cultural advantage

Evidence

The extraordinary agents endemic to religions appear to possess a particularly evocative set of abilities not shared by ordinary beings. They can be invisible; they can see things from afar; they can move through physical objects. This minimal counterintuitiveness is memorable, giving these concepts an advantage in cultural transmission. These departures from common sense are systematic but not radical enough to rupture meaning completely. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 364

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: The omniscient, invisible, all-seeing Big God is itself a minimal counterintuitive agent — the very traits that make gods memetic are the ones Norenzayan ties to moral enforcement.
• DEFINE: Spells out the trait-set (invisibility, remote seeing, matter penetration) that defines supernatural agents’ memorable profile.

Related

• Religious concepts persist through minimal counterintuitiveness that is memorable without rupturing meaning (similarity 0.83)
• Belief in supernatural watchers depends on both intuitive cognition and cultural transmission (similarity 0.83)
• Supernatural watcher gods extend an intuitive human social-monitoring faculty. (similarity 0.82)
• Moralizing supernatural agents help sustain cooperation at scales beyond natural limits (similarity 0.81)
• Supernatural watcher beliefs check selfish behavior once social worlds grew transparent (similarity 0.80)
• Memorability alone cannot explain which supernatural agents get worshipped (similarity 0.80)
• Supernatural belief works through the same surveillance mechanism that generates prosocial behavior (similarity 0.79)
• Supernatural monitoring caused the God-prosociality association, not the reverse (similarity 0.79)
• Surviving supernatural beliefs mildly violate intuitive expectations rather than wildly or never doing so (similarity 0.79)
• The most culturally successful supernatural beliefs mildly violate intuitive expectations. (similarity 0.79)
• Potent supernatural monitors must balance transcendence with human-like graspability (similarity 0.78)
• Supernatural punishment psychology is agreed upon despite evolutionary disputes (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Supernatural beliefs that mildly violate intuitions spread better than others #corroborates (0.95) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 127
• Moralizing supernatural agents help sustain cooperation at scales beyond natural limits #expands (0.85) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 413
• Language and gossip created evolutionary pressure for supernatural surveillance beliefs #expands (0.85) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 442
• Belief in supernatural watchers evolved as an adaptive guard against selfishness #expands (0.85) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 441
• Supernatural watchers and rituals jointly forged large-scale moral communities #expands (0.80) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 49
• Cultural evolution fills in god content within evolved mentalizing constraints #expands (0.80) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 81
• Trust in impartial institutions substitutes for supernatural monitoring of strangers. #contradicts (0.75) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 553
• Supernatural punishment explains religion’s prosocial effects better than ideomotor priming #responds-to (0.75) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 174