passion narratives is evident from the history of Christian art, music, and
literature. For example, Bach’sSt Matthew PassionandSt John Passiongive
much room to the emotional response of the listeners of the biblical narrative
in the form of moving arias and chorals. But also many minor characters are
shown in emotionally laden situations in the gospels, suffering from illness,
being in extreme need, or seeking help for their children. In all of these
narratives, emotionally arousing details contributed to the successful trans-
mission of the whole story, including details that were not emotionally laden
themselves.
4.7 SELECTIVE PROCESSES IN TRANSMISSIONAny changes induced by multiple options available to performers or authors,
as well as inaccuracies due to the lapses of memory can be considered as
variations exposed to selective pressures. In our previous discussion of cultural
evolutionary processes (see Chapter 2), we have considered selective pressures
on the level of cultural bits (memes), on the level of the organism (people
carrying the respective traits), and on the level of groups of organisms
(societies). I also argued that (Sperberian) attraction to maturationally natural
cognitive structures is one of the important factors but it does not exclude
other selective processes. In this chapter, I will focus on selection among
possible variants on the level of the texts, irrespective of their influence on
the people who transmit them or hold beliefs generated or supported by the
text. Other selective pressures, which are not my concern in this chapter,
include the impact of the texts on the lives of individuals and groups. For
example, the content of early Christian transmission certainly influenced
moral behavior and social network formation (see Chapters 8 and 9,
respectively).
Above we have discussed the origins and roles of cognitive schemata. We
have seen that information from both first-hand experience and cultural
learning can be integrated into schemata; we also suggested that schemata
could be innate or at least shaped by innate cognitive structures. We cited
Schank and Abelson’s observation that the costs of revising schemata can be
great (due to cascading effects on other schemata), which is one way to explain
why we adapt new memories to schemata more often than we revise schemata
to include new information. Interestingly, the violation of schemata can
contribute to the spread of an idea under some circumstances. As Pascal
Boyer suggested, some ideas spread among people because they violate cog-
nitive schemata in particularly successful ways: they“combine certain sche-
matic assumptions provided by intuitive ontologies, with non-schematic ones
provided by explicit cultural transmission”(Boyer, 1994b, p. 48). Intuitive,
80 Cognitive Science and the New Testament