Showing papers by "Justin L. Barrett published in 2001"
TL;DR: This article found that counterintuitive concepts with single expectation-violating features were more successfully transmitted than concepts that were entirely congruent with category-level expectations, even if they were highly unusual or bizarre.
Abstract: The four experiments presented support Boyer’ s theory that counterintuitive concepts have transmission advantages that account for the commonness and ease of communicating many non-natural cultural concepts. In Experiment 1, 48 American college students recalled expectation-violating items from culturally unfamiliar folk stories better than more mundane items in the stories. In Experiment 2, 52 American college students in a modie ed serial reproduction task transmitted expectation-violating items in a written narrative more successfully than bizarre or common items. In Experiments 3 and 4, these e ndings were replicated with orally presented and transmitted stimuli, and found to persist even after three months. To sum, concepts with single expectation-violating features were more successfully transmitted than concepts that were entirely congruent with category-level expectations, even if they were highly unusual or bizarre. This transmission advantage for counterintuitive concepts may explain, in part, why such concepts are so prevalent across cultures and so readily spread.
222 citations
TL;DR: The results of the study suggest that children do not consistently use human agent concepts but instead can use different agent concepts for some nonhuman agents like God and special animals.
Abstract: Little research exists on how children understand the actions of nonhuman agents. Researchers often assume that children overgeneralize and attribute human properties such as false beliefs to nonhuman agents. In this study, three experiments were conducted to test this assumption. The experiments used 24 children in New York (aged 2,11-6,11 years), 52 children in Michigan (aged 3,5-6,11 years), and a second group of 45 children in Michigan (3,4-8,5 years) from Christian backgrounds. In the first two experiments, children participated in false-belief tests in which they were asked about human and various nonhuman agents including animals and God. Experiment 3 consisted of a modified perspective-taking task, also including nonhuman agents. The results of the study suggest that children do not consistently use human agent concepts but instead can use different agent concepts for some nonhuman agents like God and special animals. Children are not bound to anthropomorphize, but they often do.
208 citations
TL;DR: Lawson and McCauley (1990) have argued that non-cultural regularities in how actions are conceptualized inform and constrain participants' understandings of religious rituals.
Abstract: Lawson and McCauley (1990) have argued that non-cultural regularities in how actions are conceptualized inform and constrain participants’ understandings of religious rituals. This theory of ritual competence generates three predictions: 1) People with little or no knowledge of any given ritual system will have intuitions about the potential effectiveness of a ritual given minimal information about the structure of the ritual. 2) The representation of superhuman agency in the action structure will be considered the most important factor contributing to effectiveness. 3) Having an appropriate intentional agent initiate the action will be considered relatively more important than any specie c action to be performed. These three predictions were tested in two experiments with 128 North American Protestant college students who rated the probability of various e ctitious rituals to be effective in bringing about a specie ed consequence. Results support Lawson and McCauley’ s predictions and suggest that expectations regarding ordinary social actions apply to religious rituals.
83 citations
TL;DR: This article found that participants were more likely to ask a supercomputer or Superman to solve a problem through mechanistic intervention than God, while psychosocial agents (such as God) are expected to require physical contact to act on non-agents.
Abstract: Four studies (two experiments, a journaling study, and a questionnaire) conducted with American Protestant college students explored intuitions concerning petitionary prayer. Since Protestant theology offers little teaching on through which modes of causation God is most likely to act, it was hypothesized that intuitive causal cognition would be used to generate inferences regarding this aspect of petitionary prayer. Participants in these studies favored asking God to act via psychological causation over the biological and mechanistic domains. Further, in fictitious scenarios participants reported being more likely to ask a supercomputer or Superman to solve a problem through mechanistic intervention than God. These results are consistent with two previous findings: that God is often intuitively represented as having a single physical location (and it is not nearby); and psychosocial agents (such as God) are expected to require physical contact to act on non-agents.
45 citations