Cognitive templates for religious concepts: cross-cultural evidence for recall of counter-intuitive representations

By Pascal Boyer, Charles Ramble. Cognitive Sciences, 2001

400 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Health, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/92f3dae41fdd76786cb94e02e14a9067da0823f5

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Citations in the corpus

THE CULTURAL TRANSMISSION OF FAITH Why innate intuitions are necessary, but insufficient, to explain religious belief (2011, background): “Examples of counter-intuitive concepts from this literature are ‘a person who can be in two places at once’ (Boyer and Ramble 2001 ) and a ‘thirsty door’ (Norenzayan et al.”
The cognitive and evolutionary psychology of religion (2004, positive): “A critical property of any religious concept, on Boyer’s view, is its minimally counterintuitive structure (Boyer 1994; Boyer and Ramble 2001).”
Intuitive Conceptions of Dead Agents' Minds: The Natural Foundations of Afterlife Beliefs as Phenomenological Boundary (2002, background): “Boyer (2001, pp. 73-74; italics in original) reasons: The concept [ghost] is that of a person who has counterintuitive physical properties.”
The evolution of costly displays, cooperation and religion: credibility enhancing displays and their implications for cultural evolution (2009, background): “An examples of acounterintuitive concept from this literature is “a person who can be in two places at once” ( Boyer & Ramble, 2001 ).”
Parasites, Behavioral Defenses, and the Social Psychological Mechanisms Through Which Cultures Are Evoked (2006, background): “Either way, these cognitive and emotional biases render psychology central to the study of cultural evolution (see, e.g., Boyer & Ramble, 2001; Heath, Bell, & Sternberg, 2001; Norenzayan, Atran, Faulkner, & Schaller, 2006).”
Memory and Mystery: The Cultural Selection of Minimally Counterintuitive Narratives (2006, methodology): “This is consistent with prior findings indicating that intuitive violations and strangeness are two distinct processes and only the former reliably affects the recall of supernatural ideas (e.g., Boyer & Ramble, 2001 ).”
The science of religious beliefs (2008, background): “While violating too many maturationally natural expectations can make a concept extremely difficult to remember or process, violating a small number of such inferences and expectations has been shown to make concepts more memorable; Pascal Boyer and Charles Ramble have documented that such ‘minimall”
Bringing ritual to mind : psychological foundations of cultural forms (2002, background): “(See Boyer and Ramble, 2001, Barrett, 2000, and Barrett and Lawson, 2001.)”
The Evolution of Religion: How Cognitive By-Products, Adaptive Learning Heuristics, Ritual Displays, and Group Competition Generate Deep Commitments to Prosocial Religions (2010, background): “Results have been observed immediately, as well as after a three-month delay, in samples from the United States, France, Gabon, Nepal ( Boyer and Ramble 2001 ), as well as from Maya (Atran and Norenzayan 2004).”
Our Gods: Variation in Supernatural Minds (2011, background): “Experimental studies suggest that these violations make such concepts easier to remember than intuitive ideas (Boyer 2000; Boyer & Ramble 2001).”