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Did Einstein Really Say that? Testing Content Versus Context in the Cultural Selection of Quotations

Acerbi, A.; Tehrani, J.

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Authors

A. Acerbi



Abstract

We experimentally investigated the influence of context-based biases, such as prestige and popularity, on the preferences for quotations. Participants were presented with random quotes associated to famous or unknown authors (experiment one), or with random quotes presented as popular, i.e. chosen by many previous participants, or unpopular (experiment two). To exclude effects related to the content of the quotations, all participants were subsequently presented with the same quotations, again associated to famous and unknown authors (experiment three), or presented as popular or unpopular (experiment four). Overall, our results showed that context-based biases had no (in case of prestige and conformity), or limited (in case of popularity), effect in determining participants’ choices. Quotations preferred for their content were preferred in general, despite the contextual cues to which they were associated. We conclude discussing how our results fit with the well-known phenomenon of the spread and success (especially digital) of misattributed quotations, and we draw some more general implications for cultural evolution research.

Citation

Acerbi, A., & Tehrani, J. (2018). Did Einstein Really Say that? Testing Content Versus Context in the Cultural Selection of Quotations. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 18(3-4), 293-311. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340032

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date Aug 13, 2018
Deposit Date Sep 18, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Journal of Cognition and Culture
Print ISSN 1567-7095
Electronic ISSN 1568-5373
Publisher Brill Academic Publishers
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 18
Issue 3-4
Pages 293-311
DOI https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340032
Related Public URLs https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/x8db2/

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