Expect the Unexpected? Testing for Minimally Counterintuitive (MCI) Bias in the Transmission of Contemporary Legends

In this study, we use computational methods for analyzing cultural transmission to examine the role of cognitive selection pressures on the evolution of narratives, the first use of computational phylogenetic analysis in the study of contemporary legends. It has been suggested that a number of biases in transmission may alter the content and structure of narrative so as to maximize how transmittable it is. One bias that has attracted much...