Concepts that violate a small number of intuitive expectations are remembered and transmitted better than either mundane or wildly bizarre ones.
A statue that hears prayers is ordinary in every respect but one, and that single violation makes it memorable while leaving the rest inferable. Boyer's argument is that religious concepts cluster at this optimum because transmission selects for it, not because anyone designed them. The experimental support is real and less consistent than the theory's prominence implies.
In practice
- A product pitch with one surprising property is retold; one with five is not repeated at all.
- A policy that breaks a single expectation is remembered by everyone, and a wholly novel scheme is remembered by nobody.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation is a memory optimum: a single violation of intuitive expectation makes a concept striking while the rest stays inferable, which aids both recall and retelling, where a wildly strange concept is hard to hold and a mundane one is not worth passing on.
- In its favour
- The transmission advantage has been shown in several experiments, and the theory makes specific predictions about which supernatural concepts should survive, which is unusual in the field.
- Against it
- The recall advantage has mixed replication and is sensitive to list composition and delay, and the step from memorability to the content of actual religions is an argument rather than a finding.
- Standing
- The recall advantage has mixed replication and appears sensitive to list composition and delay; the theoretical claim about religious concepts rests on it.
- Subject
- Sociology & Culture
- Essay
- The measured patterns of social life