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From individual to social counterintuitiveness: how layers of innovation weave together to form multilayered tapestries of human cultures

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Abstract

The emerging field of cognition and culture has had some success in explaining the spread of counterintuitive religious concepts around the world. However, researchers have been reluctant to extend its findings to explain the widespread occurrence of culturally counterintuitive ideas in general. This article develops a broader notion of social counterintuitiveness to include ideas that violate shared expectations of a group of people and argues that the notion of social counterintuitiveness is more crucial to explaining cultural success of surprising ideas than the traditional notion of individual counterintuitiveness. Building on the context-based account of individual counterintuitiveness, the article also outlines how the once unorthodox cultural ideas become conventionalized over time only to be swept under the next wave of cultural innovation. By helping us peel away the layers of tradition that weave together the multilayered tapestry of culture, this account can be useful for understanding the development of cultural scaffolding that is needed to support the spread of maximally counterintuitive concepts such as widespread religious concepts of God and ghosts.

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Notes

  1. The context includes the mental knowledge that a reader has in her memory when processing a concept.

  2. Indeed an idea may be counterintuitive for a person in one context but not counterintuitive in another context (Upal 2005a, b; Upal et al. 2007).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Influence and Effects Research Group, Adversarial Intent Section, Defence Research and Development Canada, 1133 W. Sheppard Ave, Toronto, ON, M3M 3B9, Canada

    M. Afzal Upal

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  1. M. Afzal Upal
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Correspondence to M. Afzal Upal.

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Upal, M.A. From individual to social counterintuitiveness: how layers of innovation weave together to form multilayered tapestries of human cultures. Mind Soc 10, 79–96 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11299-011-0083-8

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