Counterintuitive Representations Research Articles

A note on peak inelastic displacement as a proxy for structural damage in seismic sequences

Structural reliability assessment for a building that may experience damage accumulation during a seismic sequence can play an important role in decision making for post-earthquake repair operations or demolition and rebuilding. This typically requires the integration of the aftershock ground motion hazard at the site with the probabilistic description of the damaged building's capacity to withstand the shaking of the seismic sequence. This is usually quantified as the conditional probability that the structure, starting from a specific damage state and for given shaking intensity, will reach a more severe one. In sequence-based seismic risk studies, an analytically-derived estimate of the peak inelastic displacement is often used as a proxy for structural damage. This paper investigates the issues behind this choice and the ability of inelastic displacement demand to adequately describe structural damage due to a seismic sequence, when compared with more direct metrics of damage, such as stiffness and strength degradation. To reach this objective, a series of inelastic single-degree-of-freedom systems, having different natural period, backbones and post-elastic behavior, were subjected to sequential dynamic analysis, while considering a series of arbitrarily chosen damage states, conventionally defined by displacement demand thresholds. The investigation showed that maintaining the attractive simplicity of deformation-based damage proxies in sequence-based risk analysis, can lead to some counterintuitive representations of seismic vulnerability. Some results suggest that such problems could be alleviated if one were to consider some dependence of damage state transition thresholds on the current state of the structure.

The Mnemonic of Intuitive Ontology Violation is Not the Distinctiveness Effect: Evidence From a Broad Age Spectrum of Persons in the uk and China During a Free-Recall Task

Abstract The typical formulation of Pascal Boyer’s counterintuitiveness theory asserts that concepts violating intuitive ontological-category structures are more memorable. However, Boyer’s (2001) original claim centered on the transmission advantages of counter-ontological representations that were cultural. Nevertheless, subsequent studies focused on the recall of novel counterintuitive representations, and an “alternative account” of the memorability of counterintuitive concepts has emerged resembling the distinctiveness effect (Upal, 2010). Yet, experimental evidence shows that familiar concepts have memorability advantages over novel ones (Anaki & Bentin, 2009; Ingram, Mickes, & Wixted, 2011). This investigation of these pan-cultural transmission biases used a large age-representative sample (13–86 years; N = 365) in the uk and China. Results were analyzed by hlm, with familiarity, counterintuitiveness, and delay as 2-level fixed factors, and age as a covariate. No support was revealed for the typical formulation of the hypothesis — however, a significant age effect and interaction of familiarity x counterintuitiveness were found.

The Mnemonic of Intuitive Ontology Violation is not the Distinctiveness Effect: Evidence from a Broad Age Spectrum of Persons in the uk and China during a Free-Recall Task

The typical formulation of Pascal Boyer’s counterintuitiveness theory asserts that concepts violating intuitive ontological-category structures are more memorable. However, Boyer’s (2001) original claim centred on the transmission advantages of counter-ontological representations that were cultural. Nevertheless, subsequent studies focused on the recall of novel counterintuitive representations, and an “alternative account” of the memorability of counterintuitive concepts has emerged resembling the distinctiveness effect. Yet, experimental evidence shows that familiar concepts have memorability advantages over novel ones. This investigation of these pan-cultural transmission biases used a large age-representative sample (13–86 years;N= 365) in theukand China. Results were analysed byhlm, with familiarity, counterintuitiveness, and delay as 2-level fixed factors, and age as a covariate. No support was revealed for the typical formulation of the hypothesis — however, a significant age effect and interaction of familiarity × counterintuitiveness were found.

ФЕНОМЕНОЛОГИЧЕСКИЙ АНАЛИЗ РЕЛИГИОЗНОЙ НОРМЫ ОТВЕТСТВЕННОСТИ У ЛЮДЕЙ С НОРМАТИВНОЙ И ДИФФУЗНОЙ РЕЛИГИОЗНОСТЬЮ

The paper phenomenologically analyzes religious norms of responsibility in people with different types of religiousness. Religious norms are considered as regulators of social, group and individual behavior based on counter-intuitive representations. The types of religious norms revealed in the course of the previous research allow studying the question of the structure and content of these types depending on the confessional identity and type of religiousness. This article is devoted to the phenomenological analysis of the religious norm of responsibility in people with different types of religiousness. The method of data collection met all criteria of validity of qualitative research. The main criterion for differentiation of respondents according to the type of religiousness was the parameters of churching. The method of data collection was group interviews. The main method of data analysis was phenomenological analysis, a heuristic approach. As a result of the analysis, the structure of the religious norm of responsibility was revealed. It represents two main categories describing the representations of the religious norm of responsibility attribution: objective and subjective aspects. The objective aspect implies the representation of the social situation of responsibility, as well as representation of acceptance of the responsibility. The subjective aspect implies a locus of responsibility and its motivation. The subjective aspect of responsibility representation is dominant in believers with normative religiousness, while the objective aspect – in believers with diffusive religiousness. Normative religiosity shifts the locus of responsibility mainly “inward”, which occurs due to identification with the introjected counter-intuitive agent, the object of faith. Diffusive religiousness, on the contrary, implies an emphasis on the objective aspect of the responsibility representation. It allows one to reduce self-control, find an excuse for “irresponsibility”, choose between alternatives “for yourself or for the others”, “for events or for actions”.

Is there a window of opportunity for religiosity? Children and adolescents preferentially recall religious-type cultural representations, but older adults do not

ABSTRACTIs there a sensitive period in childhood and adolescence for acquiring religiosity? Does a cultural group’s familiarity with religious-type representations affect individuals’ memory for counterintuitive representations? Boyer’s theory asserts that concepts violating developmentally natural intuitive knowledge structures are more transmittable than other concepts. Counterintuitive representations are prevalent across cultures in religious materials, folktales, and children’s stories. A large age-representative sample in the UK and China was used to investigate the interaction of template- and schema-level effects for transmission biases endemic to cultural groups. The measure of free recall employed a mixing of presentation media for stimuli. Results were analyzed using a hierarchical linear model, with familiarity, counterintuitiveness, and delay as two-level fixed factors, and age and schema-level effects as covariates. Younger persons recalled significantly more counterintuitive stimuli than stimuli consistent with domain-specific intuitive assumptions – a trend reversed for older persons.

How Schrödinger’s Cat Became a Zombie

Research on cultural transfers between science and religion has not paid enough attention to popular science. This article develops models that grasp the complexities of the epidemiology of science-based representations in non-scientific contexts by combining tools from the cognitive science of religion, the history, sociology, and philosophy of science, and the study of new religious movements. The popularization of science is conceptualized as a process of cognitive optimization, which starts with the communication efforts of scientists in science-internal forums and accelerates in popular science. The popularization process narrows the range of scientific representations that reach the public domain in structured ways: it attracts minimally counterintuitive representations, minimizes the massively counterintuitive, and re-represents (or translates) hard-to-process concepts in inferentially rich metaphors. This filtered sample trigger new processes of meaning-making as they are picked up and re-embedded in new cultural contexts.

Refining and Testing “Counterintuitiveness” in Virtual Reality: Cross-Cultural Evidence for Recall of Counterintuitive Representations

The experiment presented provides partial cross-cultural empirical support for Pascal Boyer's theory of the transmission of minimally counterintuitive (MCI) ideas. Boyer hypothesized that concepts with a small number of counterintuitive features are better remembered and more faithfully communicated than extremely counterintuitive concepts or comparable ordinary or even unusual concepts. This transmission advantage may help to explain the cross-cultural ubiquity of religious/supernatural concepts, which often have counterintuitive features. The experiment was conducted in Second Life, an online 3D virtual world. Fifty English-speaking western participants and 51 Chinese-speaking participants from far-eastern nations viewed intuitive and counterintuitive test items and then were asked to free recall the displays immediately and after varying delays. Results show that MCI displays were not better recalled than intuitive displays at initial reporting. For both samples, however, the amount of time elapsed since exposure to the test items correlated significantly with memory degradation for intuitive concepts but not for counterintuitive concepts. These results suggest that although MCI concepts may not be more easily encoded than intuitive concepts, once they are encoded they may be more easily retrieved than intuitive concepts. Results also show that, among the westerners, increased age predicted poorer delayed recall of MCI but not intuitive items, suggesting that the MCI effect may bear most directly on transmitting ideas to adolescents and young adults.

Dreaming in religion and pilgrimage: cognitive, evolutionary and cultural perspectives

Dreams are a universal human experience and they form cultural themes in folk traditions and religious rituals, such as pilgrimages and dream incubation. Dreams and dream beliefs are important since they contain representations of interacting supernatural agents that have full access to information of strategic importance to humans. The relevance of dreams often relates to the dreamers' concerns about the future and about health, and in this sense they show similarity with divination and oracles. This article suggests that religious dreaming is underpinned by an evolved system of threat simulation that is activated in dreaming processes; this is associated with a proclivity to evoke agent concepts and to use counterintuitive representations in cultural communication. It is argued that the use of a ‘hypersensitive agency detection device’ draws upon emotionally laden threat simulation in dreaming that makes reference to counterintuitive supernatural agents that are particularly relevant. This suggests that recalling religious dreams and the cultural transmission of dream reports, narratives and interpretations rely on representations of agents in general and the salience of counterintuitive agents in particular. Furthermore, the explanatory adequacy of ‘threat simulation theory’ is related to non-apprehensive religious dreams and ‘social simulation theory’. These discussions lead on to ethnographic descriptions of the connections between ‘supernaturalism’, pilgrimage, dream beliefs and dream incubation rituals in Nepalese Himalaya and Indian Bengal.

Virtual reality as a spiritual experience: a perspective from the cognitive science of religion

Virtual reality (VR) is often described as a gateway to a religious or spiritual experience but why? In this article, using theories and evidence taken from the cognitive science of religion (CSOR), we hypothesize that human minds may interact with VR-hosted phenomena in a manner highly similar to that in which they interact with supernatural concepts. Specifically, we note that both VR inputs and supernatural concepts contain information that (1) contradicts the intuitive set of expectations we bring to an ontological category of phenomena (for example, natural objects, animals) and (2) allows us to draw a superabundance of inferences from our social cognitive mechanisms with minimal effort. We then summarize these points by illustrating a common VR phenomenon virtual touch wherein counterintuitive representations and strategic information coalesce to create an emotionally salient experience that is itself counterintuitive and by some accounts spiritual-like.

Counter-Intuitive Religious Representations from the Perspective of Early Intersubjective Development and Complex Representational Constellations. A Methodological Reflection

My main concern in this article is the relevance of theoretically integrative approaches. I argue that such approaches are methodologically better equipped for the psychology of religion because they correspond with the inherent complexity of religiosity. In order to concretize this matter I critically evaluate the hypothesis proposed by some cognitive researchers that the attraction of counter-intuitive representations provides an explanation of religion. Irrelevant aspects are left out in this hypothesis. In contrast to this I rely on cognitive-analytic perspectives that are based on a broader theoretical foundation. This generates a more complete picture that also connects to the tradition built on Otto's (1923) idea of the wholly other. From this perspective it is more plausible to assume that religious representations are trajectories of the early evolving tripartite sense of self, other and world and, further, formed by individual mentalization capacity. This can be conceptualized in terms of interplay between specific complex representational constellations rooted in different phases of early development. Integrative approaches that depict mental activity as a dynamic and multifaceted phenomenon embedded in intersubjectivity are relevant for the psychology of religion.

Counterintuitiveness as the hallmark of religiosity

This article presents empirical evidence for the hypothesis that persons consider counterintuitive representations more likely to be religious than other kinds of beliefs. In three studies the subjects were asked to rate the probable religiousness of various kinds of imaginary beliefs. The results show that counterintuitive representations in general, and counterintuitive representations involving a conscious agent in particular, are considered much more likely to be religious. Counterintuitiveness thus seems to be an important element in a folk-understanding of religion.

BUDDHISM, RELIGION, AND THE CONCEPT OF "GOD"

AbstractIt is here argued that, although the Buddha and the buddhas are not regarded as gods by Buddhists, they clearly fulfill the criteria of "counter-intuitive agents" as they have been presented by Pascal Boyer. To the extent that religion can be understood as human thought, action, and experience that involve counter-intuitive representations, Buddhism does not have to be the problematic touchstone for a global concept of religion.

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

Presents results of free-recall experiments conducted in France, Gabon and Nepal, to test predictions of a cognitive model of religious concepts. The world over, these concepts include violations of conceptual expectations at the level of domain knowledge (e.g., about ‘animal’ or ‘artifact’ or ‘person’) rather than at the basic level. In five studies we used narratives to test the hypothesis that domain-level violations are recalled better than other conceptual associations. These studies used material constructed in the same way as religious concepts, but not used in religions familiar to the subjects. Experiments 1 and 2 confirmed a distinctiveness effect for such material. Experiment 3 shows that recall also depends on the possibility to generate inferences from violations of domain expectations. Replications in Gabon (Exp. 4) and Nepal (Exp. 5) showed that recall for domain-level violations is better than for violations of basic-level expectations. Overall sensitivity to violations is similar in different cultures and produces similar recall effects, despite differences in commitment to religious belief, in the range of local religious concepts or in their mode of transmission. However, differences between Gabon and Nepal results suggest that familiarity with some types of domain-level violations may paradoxically make other types more salient. These results suggest that recall effects may account for the recurrent features found in religious concepts from different cultures.

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

AbstractPresents results of free‐recall experiments conducted in France, Gabon and Nepal, to test predictions of a cognitive model of religious concepts. The world over, these concepts include violations of conceptual expectations at the level of domain knowledge (e.g., about ‘animal’ or ‘artifact’ or ‘person’) rather than at the basic level. In five studies we used narratives to test the hypothesis that domain‐level violations are recalled better than other conceptual associations. These studies used material constructed in the same way as religious concepts, but not used in religions familiar to the subjects. Experiments 1 and 2 confirmed a distinctiveness effect for such material. Experiment 3 shows that recall also depends on the possibility to generate inferences from violations of domain expectations. Replications in Gabon (Exp. 4) and Nepal (Exp. 5) showed that recall for domain‐level violations is better than for violations of basic‐level expectations. Overall sensitivity to violations is similar in different cultures and produces similar recall effects, despite differences in commitment to religious belief, in the range of local religious concepts or in their mode of transmission. However, differences between Gabon and Nepal results suggest that familiarity with some types of domain‐level violations may paradoxically make other types more salient. These results suggest that recall effects may account for the recurrent features found in religious concepts from different cultures.