What is Similarity and Contagion?
“Similarity and contagion” is a blanket term used to refer to ways of thinking that sees similar objects as metaphysically connected (similarity) and objects that come into contact once as always being in contact (contagion). The term is used in cognitive psychology and anthropology for these universal tendencies in human reasoning. Anthropologists have done surveys of hundreds of cultures; including primitive tribal cultures essentially unchanged for thousands of years, and have found similarity and contagion to be completely universal. Similarity and contagion-based thinking frequently underlies taboos, superstitions, folk magic and folk theories about the way the world works. For instance, to curse someone, one might obtain a lock of the target’s hair and ceremoniously defile it. Because the hair is from the person and even grew from them, it is thought to retain that person’s essence after separation. What befalls the hair will befall the hair’s owner. This principle is most blatan
“Similarity and contagion†is a blanket term used to refer to ways of thinking that sees similar objects as metaphysically connected (similarity) and objects that come into contact once as always being in contact (contagion). The term is used in cognitive psychology and anthropology for these universal tendencies in human reasoning. Anthropologists have done surveys of hundreds of cultures; including primitive tribal cultures essentially unchanged for thousands of years, and have found similarity and contagion to be completely universal. Similarity and contagion-based thinking frequently underlies taboos, superstitions, folk magic and folk theories about the way the world works. For instance, to curse someone, one might obtain a lock of the target’s hair and ceremoniously defile it. Because the hair is from the person and even grew from them, it is thought to retain that person’s essence after separation. What befalls the hair will befall the hair’s owner. This principle is mo
