© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 DOI: 10.1163/156770909X12489459066345 Journal of Cognition and Culture 9 (2009) 271–287 brill.nl/jocc Counterintuitiveness in Folktales: Finding the Cognitive Optimum Justin L. Barrett* Emily Reed Burdett Tenelle J. Porter Centre for Anthropology and Mind, University of Oxford, 64 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6PN, UK *Corresponding author, e-mail: justin.barrett@anthro.ox.ac.uk Abstract he present study sought to (1) determine whether Barrett’s counterintuitiveness coding and quantifying scheme (CI-Scheme) could be applied to cultural materials with sufficient inter- coder reliability, (2) provide evidence concerning just how counterintuitive is too counterintuitive for a concept to be a recurrent cultural idea, and (3) test whether counterintuitive intentional agent concepts are more common in folktales than other classes of counterintuitive concepts. Seventy-three folktales from around the world were sampled from larger collections. Using Barrett’s CI-Scheme, two independent coders identified 116 counterintuitive objects and scored them for degree of counterintuitiveness with very high inter-rater concordance. Of folktales, 79% had one or two counterintuitive objects. Of the counterintuitive objects 93% had a counterintuitiveness score of only one. Of counterintuitive objects, 98% were agents. Results suggest the CI-Scheme may have utility for analyzing cultural materials, that the cognitive optimum for cultural transmission falls around one counterintuitive feature, and that counterintuitive agents are more common than other types of counterintuitive objects in folktales. Keywords Cognitive architecture, communication, concepts, culture, representation Exploring the transmission of cultural ideas and the underlying cognitive mechanisms that generate and maintain these ideas continues to be a popular area of research. Cultural ideas or concepts are those that are shared or trans- mitted within a group and are largely spread through human interaction and behavior via human cognitive architecture (Sperber and Hirschfeld, 2004). Examining this conceptual architecture in relation to cultural transmission is central to understanding which ideas are likely to stabilize as cultural forms and become common across cultures. Pascal Boyer’s theory of transmission of