Imaginary worlds through the evolutionary lens: Ultimate functions, proximate mechanisms, cultural distribution

Dubourg, Edgar; Baumard, Nicolas

doi:10.1017/s0140525x22000048

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 79 publications

(59 reference statements)

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“…We further demonstrate that this difference translates in the cultural domain, impacting the reported preference for imaginary worlds in fiction. Besides, we show that the psychological trait of systemizing is highly correlated to exploratory preferences, supporting the hypothesis that systemizing is subsumed under the drive to explore that we coined environmental curiosity 175 . Under our theoretical account, systemizing is the labeling of an extreme form of information processing that this mechanism of curiosity about the physical world can take, which is indeed modulated by sex differences because of ancestral selection pressures.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 78%

Exploratory preferences explain the human fascination for imaginary worlds in fictional stories

Dubourg

Thouzeau

Dampierre

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

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Imaginary worlds are present and often central in many of the most culturally successful modern narrative fictions, be it in novels (e.g., Harry Potter), movies (e.g., Star Wars), video games (e.g., The Legend of Zelda), graphic novels (e.g., One Piece) and TV series (e.g., Game of Thrones). We propose that imaginary worlds are popular because they activate exploratory preferences that evolved to help us navigate the real world and find new fitness-relevant information. Therefore, we hypothesize that the attraction to imaginary worlds is intrinsically linked to the desire to explore novel environments and that both are influenced by the same underlying factors. Notably, the inter-individual and cross-cultural variability of the preference for imaginary worlds should follow the inter-individual and cross-cultural variability of exploratory preferences (with the personality trait Openness-to-experience, age, sex, and ecological conditions). We test these predictions with both experimental and computational methods. For experimental tests, we run a pre-registered online experiment about movie preferences (N = 230). For computational tests, we leverage two large cultural datasets, namely the Internet Movie Database (N = 9424 movies) and the Movie Personality Dataset (N = 3.5 million participants), and use machine-learning algorithms (i.e., random forest and topic modeling). In all, consistent with how the human preference for spatial exploration adaptively varies, we provide empirical evidence that imaginary worlds appeal more to more explorative people, people higher in Openness-to-experience, younger individuals, males, and individuals living in more affluent environments. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of the cultural evolution of narrative fiction and, more broadly, the evolution of human exploratory preferences.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 78%

Exploratory preferences explain the human fascination for imaginary worlds in fictional stories

Dubourg

Thouzeau

Dampierre

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

Self Cite

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What made us “hunter-gatherers of words”

Boeckx

2023

Front. Neurosci.

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This paper makes three interconnected claims: (i) the “human condition” cannot be captured by evolutionary narratives that reduce it to a recent ‘cognitive modernity', nor by narratives that eliminates all cognitive differences between us and out closest extinct relatives, (ii) signals from paleogenomics, especially coming from deserts of introgression but also from signatures of positive selection, point to the importance of mutations that impact neurodevelopment, plausibly leading to temperamental differences, which may impact cultural evolutionary trajectories in specific ways, and (iii) these trajectories are expected to affect the language phenotypes, modifying what is being learned and how it is put to use. In particular, I hypothesize that these different trajectories influence the development of symbolic systems, the flexible ways in which symbols combine, and the size and configurations of the communities in which these systems are put to use.

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Pop Spirituality

Kapcar

2024

svet

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Magical practices have undergone significant changes in the past decades, shifting towards accessibility and individuality. With the rise in popularity of individual, custom-designed magical rituals, popular culture has proven to be one of the important aspects associated with the new practice. Influential, reaching a wide audience, with a strong focus on immersive visual aspects, it is of no surprise that practitioners have started to include popcultural elements into their rituals. New schools of magic, such as the influential Chaos Magick, have proven to be a fertile ground for these innovative practices. This paper will focus on the mutual interaction between occult knowledge represented through visual means in popular culture and the magical practice of modern mages.

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Imaginary worlds through the evolutionary lens: Ultimate functions, proximate mechanisms, cultural distribution

Cited by 3 publications

References 79 publications

Exploratory preferences explain the human fascination for imaginary worlds in fictional stories

Exploratory preferences explain the human fascination for imaginary worlds in fictional stories

What made us “hunter-gatherers of words”

Pop Spirituality

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