The dissemination of divination in roman republican times

was the counterintuitive agent who was responsible for the pattern. If the thesis proposed is
correct we can formulate the hypothesis that ritualized action will produce higher credibility
and intentional action lower credibility of the information produced.
The effect of ritualized action on the evaluation of credibility in divination
No psychological research about how divination is represented has been done. To test the
thesis proposed here an experiment was therefore designed. The basic paradigm developed
by Justin Barrett and others to test ritual intuitions (Barrett 2002; Sørensen, Liénard, &
Feeney 2006) was adapted for the specific task of ritual intuitions regarding divinatory
rituals. In this paradigm the participants read a fictive story and were subsequently asked to
rate how likely something was to happen.
Three fictive stories were designed, in which there is a main character (questioner) who has
an urgent problem that he cannot find the solution to by normal means (an actual or potential
misfortune). He visits a diviner (operator), who performs an action by a special technique
resulting in a divinatory sign, in this case some sort of pattern. The pattern is subsequently
interpreted by the diviner as giving the necessary information to solve the problem. The only
difference between the three stories is their endings; each ending varies according to the type
of action used in the technique to produce the pattern differed. After reading the story the
participants were asked to assess the credibility of the information. The ritualized actions
were characterized by the operator not being in the control of the action (e.g. throwing
pebbles to the floor to produce a pattern) and the intentional ones were characterized by the
operator being in the control of the actions (e.g. putting the pebbles on the floor one by one to
produce a pattern). Based on the arguments above concerning the role of intentionality in
action, we would expect the ritualized ones to be rated as more credible.
It would, however, potentially skew the measure of credibility if we asked directly.
Therefore another way to test the credibility was devised. What we are interested in is not
whether people say that they believe the information, but whether they show it by their
actions. Self report measures are not always very reliable, because many other factors could
distort them. Therefore the participants were asked whether the main character would act on
the answers or not. Answers were designed to recommend action and to be potentially very
costly (danger of death or economic ruin). Therefore it was reasoned that participants would
rate it as more likely the person in the story would act the more credible the information.
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