Mickey Mouse Problem

The evolutionary theory of religion developed by Pascal Boyer, Scott Atran and others differs from previous attempts to explain why religion exists in that it does not assign certain "essential" characteristics to religion, but instead uses an evolutionary landscape of ideas. These authors ask under what conditions an idea or a complex of ideas has the propensity to impress people and to spread within a human population.

The answer offered by evolutionary psychology is as follows: People have certain intuitive beliefs about the physical world, about plants and animals and about other people; these intuitive beliefs are called "folk physics", "folk biology", "folk psychology". These folk beliefs act as "inference mechanisms" and are used to make predictions about what physical objects, plants, animals and people will do.

According to Atran [Scott Atran, "In Gods We Trust", Oxford University Press, USA; New Ed edition (November 12, 2004)] and Boyer, [Pascal Boyer, "Religion Explained", Vintage; New Ed edition (November 7, 2002)] a certain supernatural belief has the propensity of impressing people and spreading only if it alters the format of the folk belief just slightly. If a certain story departs too far away from the format of folk belief, other people find it difficult to believe it, or even to remember it. Boyer and Atran have reported in their books that all religious stories from all cultures can be understood as based on slight departures from the folk beliefs.

Within this conceptual framework the Mickey Mouse problem arises. Non-religious fantastic stories and characters, such as Mickey Mouse, are also successful in impressing people's minds and being remembered via the same psychological mechanism as religious beliefs. For example, the original Mickey Mouse (a talking mouse) is more successful than Mighty Mouse (a talking flying mouse super hero) because the original fictional character departs from folk biology only slightly.

But if the psychological mechanism responsible for their spreading is the same, what is the difference between religious stories and fantastic non-religious stories and why are religious beliefs so often associated with very strong commitments? Nobody would give his life for Mickey Mouse, but thousands would for Jesus.

The solution to this problem probably involves the fact that the content of religious stories often deals with important events such as death, while the subject of non-religious stories is usually much more trivial. [NeuroTheology, University Press, California ISBN: 0971644586, Chapter 10, Scott Atran, "The Neuropychology of Religion"]

ee also

* Evolutionary psychology of religion
* Memetics
* Origin of religion

References