Viral Mythology

by Marie D. Jones

  Interestingly, Lynch put forth seven key patterns of meme/idea transmission that described thought contagion:

  1. Quantity of Parenthood—Ideas that influence the number of children a person has. Ideas that encourage higher birth rate will replicate faster than those that discourage it.

  2. Efficiency of Parenthood—Ideas that increase the proportion of children who will adopt their parents’ ideas.

  3. Proselytic—Ideas generally passed to others beyond one’s own children, as in religious and political movements, which spread more rapidly horizontally in populations than they do from parent to child.

  4. Preservational—Ideas that influence those who continue to believe them for long periods of time, as in traditions. These ideas are hard to abandon or replace.

  5. Adversative—Ideas that influence those that hold them to attack, or sabotage competing ideas. Replication gives an advantage to the meme when it encourages aggression against other memes.

  6. Cognitive—Ideas perceived as reasonable, convincing, and cogent by most of the population who encounter them. Dependent upon ideas and traits already widely held in a population, thus spreading more passively than other meme types.

  7. Motivational—Ideas that people accept and adopt because of some self-interest benefit.

  In Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme, author Richard Brodie (who, by the way, was the original author of Microsoft Word) writes about the virus-like quality of memes and the spread of ideas, stating that memes influence our behavior in a variety of ways and that, like the gene pool we evolve from, make up a “meme pool.” Brodie writes, “Memes spread by influencing people’s minds, and thus their behavior, so that eventually someone gets infected with the meme. If a meme is in your mind, it can greatly or subtly influence your behavior.” He categorizes memes as follows:

  1. Distinction memes—These help us categorize and describe our universe by labeling them.

  2. Strategy memes—These are described as “floating rule of thumb that tells you what to do when you come across an applicable situation in order to achieve some desired result.”

  3. Association memes—These link two or more memes in the mind (for example, the idea of “baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet” as an advertising meme for the American lifestyle).

  We also have peer pressure, personal programming, and instinct and natural programming to deal with, and Brodie suggests we are moving out of an old paradigm of cultural evolution based upon innovation and conquest and into a new one based upon memetics and viruses of the mind: “Our minds excel at both copying information and following instructions.... Remember the four characteristics of a virus: penetration, copying, possibly issuing instructions, and spreading.” This, Brodie writes, is how viruses of the mind take hold on populations, whether fashion trends or religious cults. And, not all memes have to even be factual or truthful, as we know from the spread of urban legends, myth, superstition, and rumor.

  Religious beliefs seem most susceptible to this virus of the mind behavior. Adding the role of ritual may be even more effective at transmitting the belief system, according to Joseph Henrich, in his interview with Edge (“How Culture Drove Human Evolution”). Henrich states: “If you break down rituals common in many religions, they put the words in the mouths of a prestigious member of the group, someone everyone respects. That makes it more likely to transmit and be believed.” Things like animal sacrifice and the giving of large amounts of money during a ritual add to that influence as “credibility-enhancing displays” that appear as a demonstration of true belief, and are therefore more likely to be adopted by those observers as their own belief.

  Richard Brodie adds in Virus of the Mind that because fear and survival were so critical to our ancestors, many myths and religions include some type of threat of retribution from the Gods, warning the populace of the dangers of doing forbidden things. This is a great method of mind control involving memes, because those involving danger are the ones we most pay attention to. Brodie states, “As oral traditions developed, our brains were set up to amplify the dangers and give them greater significance than the rest.”

  Anti-Memes

  Not everyone sings the praises of memes and memetics. In a Psychology Today article titled “Hot Thought: Why Memes Are a Bad Idea,” Paul Thagard puts forth the argument that variation, selection, and transmission in minds and cultures is not the same as it is in genetic passing on of information. He suggests that cultural generation of ideas is more goal-oriented than genetic mutation, and that the selection of ideas involves the use of both emotion and intellectual criteria, and not just the survival-based issues of genetics. Transmission of ideas is more rapid and widespread in a culture, as well, unlike the slow progression of genetic adaption and transmission. An idea can spread through a population of millions in a matter of days, not generations.

  Philosophical differences aside, information often manages to work its way through environments and populations, often with stunning speed. One recent theory of cultural evolution take into account things like “conformation bias,” which is the tendency of individuals and groups to buy into beliefs they feel are the most commonly adhered to or represented in a populace. Proposed by anthropologist and professor of psychology and economics Joseph Heinrich, and anthropologist and coauthor of How Humans Evolved Robert Boyd, conformation bias suggests that what everyone else believes, others tend to go along with, and those beliefs get transmitted in a snowball effect, influencing more and more people who may have chosen not to think for themselves. What is commonly held to be “truth” in one generation may be passed on to future generations, as are traditions and beliefs, with room for error, but the core truths remain.

  Henrich and Boyd argue that a workable evolutionary theory rarely works through just the idea of genuine copying, that there are a number of “attractors” or manners of thinking that populations adopt in light of certain environmental and external stimuli. Thus you can have differential success in emulation of a particular cultural model without having to resort to exact copying, as in memes. (In a later chapter, we will look at the influence of memes on popular culture today.)

  Henrich champions the idea that cultural and biological evolution must be looked at together, not as separate entities in the course of overall evolution. Obviously, we have changed both genetically and behaviorally since the dawn of humanity. We are not still living in caves and hunting with spears. New ways of doing things and new ways of thinking have been as much a part of our evolution as developing less-hairy bodies and standing up straighter when we walk.

  Though all of this can be confusing, the goal is to determine not just how we humans evolved, but how our cultures did as well, and how we learned and acquired information over time, either from our ancestors or from our own novel experiences. We are not talking just about instinctual behaviors, which are learned as critical to species survival, and then passed on through the genetic line. We are talking about behaviors and beliefs that have nothing to do with survival, or instinct, yet seem to get passed along in the same mysterious way.

  We might get an idea of how information spread in ancient times by looking at how it spreads today, in a theoretical sense at least. Other than memes, we could be dealing with:

  Mental Networks

  The spread of information has often been described like a computer network, with minds interlinked and able to pass on ideas within the network in a similar structure. There is actually something called “network science” that studies sociology, medicine, and statistics to determine how everything from products to behavior to even sneezes and yawns are contagious. In an interview for Fast Company, Drake Baer talked to Harvard Medical School professor Nicholas Christakis about the science of networks.

  “Things don’t just diffuse in human populations at random. They actually diffuse through networks,” Christakis states. Our networks are the relationship webs we have with friends, colleagues, and family, and the more centr
al we are to that network, the more connections we have to others, and the more access to ideas and information.

  But just as those central to a network are at higher exposure of ideas and memes that are novel and untested, it doesn’t always put us at an advantage. Being at the center of the network increases your risk, Christakis says, of also being infected with bad information and ideas, and adopting them as your own. As with the transmission of memes, networks operate along vertical lines of influence, as well as horizontal, and if you have more relationships across the network, you have more access to ideas and information from the collective.

  Diffusion

  One theory in particular attempts to explain how new ideas and innovations, especially those involving technology, spread throughout a populace. The theory of diffusion, first posited by sociologist Everett Rogers in his 1962 book, Diffusion of Innovations, posits that social systems drive or dictate the successful adoption of a new idea or technology, as well as whether or not that idea is sustained over time. Rogers looked at more than 500 studies involving diffusion and researched the topic in the fields of anthropology and sociology, most notable rural sociology, which was his expertise.

  Rogers states that an idea or innovation must be created, then communicated, then given enough processing time to be adopted by enough members of a social system to become saturated, or reach critical mass. The social system is critical, as without an idea catching on, there can be no saturation point where the idea or technology becomes a widely accepted part of life and culture. What is interesting was Rogers’s finding that people don’t evaluate a new idea or innovation on the basis of scientific studies of its consequences. Rather, they focus on “a subjective evaluation of an innovation that is conveyed to them from other individuals like themselves.”

  Therefore, a more perception-oriented decision is involved in order for a new innovation to take hold and reach critical mass. As with something you might buy—a car or a new fridge, for example—most people were found to take the advice of a friend over what they read or researched about which product is best.

  So, an individual’s social system often holds more weight as to what information will be adopted, accepted, and passed on to future generations than hard science or factual research. Again, look at religious beliefs, superstitions, and urban legends, and one can easily see how word of mouth from a “trusted” source holds more weight than facts! This may explain the trend of viral videos and images, even the downloading of music today, which can be manipulated by “false downloads” to appear to be more popular than it really is, thus resulting in even more “real downloads.” One has to wonder if this also applies to best-seller lists of books and whether readers are being swayed to buy a book, or even see a movie, for that matter, that is really not selling well at all—all the more powerful and influential if that suggestion comes from a friend.

  This kind of diffusion may also apply to rumor and gossip, and why we tend to put more weight on what we are told by friends, even if it has no truth behind it, or why people side with conspiracy theorists more so than their own government, because of an identification with the conspiracy folks as being “victims of the Man,” even if the conspiracy crowd has no fact to back up their own claims. (More on this later.)

  Tipping Points

  Like critical mass, we have tipping points.

  Think about a scale. You put an equal amount of rocks on both sides to keep it in balance, but put more rocks on one side and eventually the scale tips. A “tipping point” is a sociological term for that particular point in time when a large group adopts a particular practice, idea, or behavior, and changes/alters its behavior accordingly. Tipping points can occur with fashion trends, political revolutions, or product popularity, and they occur when a critical mass of adoption is achieved. It’s a point of no return, during which something that was not even a part of the norm before is now increasing so rapidly within the group as to be considered epidemic. Tipping points are similar to the domino effect, viral contagion, information cascade, and even chaos theory, all of which offer a similar concept of information/ideas reaching critical mass.

  A number of sociologists and researchers have put forth tipping point models for collective behavior, including a Nobel Prize winner in 1972: Thomas Schelling, a distinguished professor of economics at the University of Maryland who received the prize in Economic Science. But it was British-Canadian journalist Malcolm Gladwell who created a tipping point for tipping points with his seminal book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference. Published in 2000, The Tipping Point introduced a sociological concept to a wide enough audience that now the phrase is often associated with Gladwell and his work.

  Gladwell describes a tipping point as the moment critical mass is achieved, or the “boiling point” that occurs when our lives are changed by a new idea. He cites three rules as the agents of change driving social epidemics:

  1. The “Law of the Few” or 80/20 Principle—Most of the work will be done by the fewest participants. In this case, approximately at a ratio of 80 to 20. The participants possess rare skills as connectors, mavens, or salesmen. Connectors are those who know a lot of people within a social system, and make connections and introductions of others. Gladwell equates connectors to a computer network hub, as these people have a wide variety of contacts in all social circles and possess a knack for making new friendships and connections. Next are the mavens, who specialize in a certain type of information and are the people we turn to for specific knowledge. These are the people who start “word of mouth epidemics”; Gladwell calls them “information brokers.” Last are the salesmen, who persuade others to do something or buy something with their negotiation skills. These three types of people drive tipping points within a social system.

  2. The Stickiness Factor—An idea or content must be “sticky” or memorable in order to achieve critical mass with a populace. Impact comes from a higher stickiness factor.

  3. Context—A social epidemic must have identifiable context for a vast number of people in order for them to adopt it as a part of their behavior. Because we are strongly influenced by our environment, a social tipping point must be relevant in contest to the “conditions and circumstances of the times and places in which they occur.”

  In an interview on his Website (Gladwell.com), Malcolm Gladwell equates tipping points to outbreaks of diseases: “Why is word of mouth so powerful? What makes TV shows like Sesame Street so good at teaching kids how to read? I think the answer to all those questions is the same. It’s that ideas and behavior and messages and products sometimes behave just like outbreaks of infectious disease. They are social epidemics.”

  Once Gladwell saw the pattern of outbreak, he saw it everywhere in the spread of ideas and new products and human behaviors. “This isn’t just a metaphor, in other worlds. I’m talking about a very literal analogy. One of the things I explore in the book is that ideas can be contagious in exactly the same way that a virus is.” Gladwell finds some similarities with memes, but argues that memes are difficult to pin down in terms of why they become so contagious. But, he believes that people can actually start “positive epidemics” of their own, because they require little input to get started, can spread very quickly (especially in this day and age), and can reach a large number of people in the process. Of course, this can be done with negative social epidemics as well, something we tackle in a later chapter.

  Mostly, to Gladwell, it’s about understanding how and why major changes often happen quickly in our world, and how we can decode that confusing change more easily by understanding the patterns of tipping points.

  Jumping Jesus, Multiple Discovery, Mass Consciousness, and a Hundred Monkeys

  Some of the more whimsical concepts of multiple discovery, or the fast spread of ideas from culture to culture, include the Hundredth Monkey Effect, which refers to a sudden and spontaneous leap of knowledge or consciousness when critical mass or a tipping point is achieved. This
can even occur across cultural boundaries. The term comes from a book, Lifetide by Dr. Lyall Watson, PhD, an ethologist working at the London Zoo. Watson was researching and writing about the work of Japanese primatologists in the 1960s involving macaques. According to Watson’s book, one macaque taught another how to wash sweet potatoes, and that macaque taught another, and so on and so on until the entire island they inhabited were adopting the behavior. But where the Hundredth Monkey Effect occurred was the moment when monkeys on other islands suddenly began washing potatoes! These monkeys had no visible means of communication with the original potato-washers, so how then could they suddenly adopt such a behavior? Was it some type of psychic communication via mass consciousness? Telepathic knowledge on behalf of the primate community? Or perhaps did the monkeys on the new islands just coincidentally figure out that washed potatoes were better to eat than dirty ones?

  Skeptics jumped down Watson’s throat, citing research on behalf of others who knew nothing of this spontaneous spread of behavior, including the comment by Watson’s own colleague, Masao Kawai, a senior researcher on the original macaque project, who claimed in an interview with Skeptical Inquirer in 1996 that he wasn’t aware of any skills “that propagated more rapidly than would be expected by normal, individual, pre-cultural propagation.”

  Still, the idea of multiple discovery, a term used by historians and sociologists to describe multiple independent discoveries, does happen, in science, art, and knowledge, and is often linked to memetics, cultural evolution, and evolutionary epistemology, which applies concepts of biological evolution to the spread of human knowledge culturally.