Fondevila, S. 2 , Martín-Loeches, M. 2, 3 , Jiménez-Ortega, L. 2, 3 , Casado, P. 2, 3 , Fernández Hernández, A. 2 & Sommer, W. 1
1 Humbold Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
2 Center for Human Evolution and Behaviour, UCM-ISCIII, Madrid, Spain
3 Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Cognitive approaches generally accept that religion, far from being an extraordinary set of facts, constitute a by-product of normal cognition. The cultural success of religious ideas has been explained as a function of their minimally counterintuitive nature, which makes them highly appealing for better recall and transmission. Thus, religious concepts challenge certain features related to intuitive core knowledge while keeping intact other tacit assumptions. However, there are also many culturally successful concepts that are counterintuitive but clearly profane. In the present experiment we addressed the question how both counterintuitive religious and profane ideas are integrated into the semantic system by using the N400 semantic component of the event related brain potentials as a measure of semantic incongruity or counterintuitiveness. Religious ideas were collected from various mythologies and religious corpora building up sentences where counterintuition appeared in the last word. The intuitive and profane sentences were elaborated by changing the last word of the religious sentences. Participants with low degree of religiosity performed a semantic judgment task based on plausibility while their brain activity was recorded. Results showed a modulation of the N400 amplitude by counterintuitiveness with a typical centroparietal scalp distribution. The main finding was a significantly larger amplitude of the N400 for the profane as compared to the religious counterintuitive ideas, the latter also displaying a larger N400 amplitude as compared to intuitive sentences. Furthermore, behavioural data showed greater difficulty in rejecting religious ideas as counterintuitive (unacceptable) than profane ones. Consequently, counterintuitive religious ideas appear as less anomalous, more plausible and easier to integrate into the semantic cognitive system and thus, only minimally counterintuitive even if they imply clear violations of core knowledge.