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Author(s): Anders Lisdorf
Title: The spread of non-natural concepts - evidence from the Roman prodigy
lists
Category: published article
Length: 23
Keywords: Counter-intuitive, transmission, history, Roman religion

Abstract: Pascal Boyer, Justin Barret and associates have recently developed
precise and testable
hypotheses about what makes a concept attention-demanding, easier to recall and
therefore
has increased probability of being transmitted. Two theses are tested: 1) that
all else being
equal counterintuitive concepts are better remembered than bizarre, and bizarre
better than
common; 2) that counterintuitive concepts containing certain templates, which
involve the
activation of theory of mind expectations should have greater success. The
research so far
has been in controlled experiments, but it should be possible to test the theses
“in the
wild”. The evidence from the roman prodigy reports offers us such a
possibility. It also
enables us to check for variation across time, which hasn’t been done
before. Thesis 1)
is conŽ rmed, but not thesis 2). It is argued however that this is not a disconŽ
rmation of
Boyer’s general thesis. By considering the context it is argued that it
does not disconŽrm
the basic assumption of the theory. The evidence could suggest that when the
“social
inferential potential” of templates activating TOM expectations is not
used it has no
transmission advantage. It is also argued that the speciŽ c distribution shows
that what
is normally considered local cultural factors, have a real effect on what is
transmitted.

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