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489

Title

Using Shakespeare to Answer Psychological Questions: Complexity and Mental Representability of Character Networksuse asterix (*) to get italics

Authors

Christian M. Thurn; Simone Sebben; Zoran KovacevicPlease use the format "First name initials family name" as in "Marie S. Curie, Niels H. D. Bohr, Albert Einstein, John R. R. Tolkien, Donna T. Strickland"

Year

2024

Picture

Abstract

Theater plays are a cultural product that can be used to learn about the capacity of human cognition. We argue that Kolmogorov complexity may be suited to operationalize the demand that is put onto a recipient's cognitive system to represent the character system of a play with sufficient detail and accuracy to follow the narrative. We analyze Shakespeare’s plays and European Drama by means of network analysis in four studies: In Study 1, we use Shakespeare's plays to estimate an approximate limit of complexity of character networks that humans can mentally represent. In Study 2, we investigate where the approximated limit lies in relation to the overall distribution of complexity in European plays. In Study 3, we focus on how complexity and the total number of speaking characters in the plays relate in European theater plays. In Study 4, we analyze the robustness of network complexity across researcher degrees of freedom using Shakespeare’s plays. We show how research on social networks can be conducted in a reproducible, transparent way, especially when relying on cultural products such as literary works.

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Keywords

network analysis; Shakespeare; Social Brain Hypothesis; European Drama; Kolmogorov complexity; Cognitive Capacity

Methods that require specific expertise (optional)

NonePlease indicate the methods that may require specialised expertise during the peer review process (use a comma to separate various required expertises).

Thematic fields

Humanities, Social sciences

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Submission date

2023-06-16 12:40:14

Recommender

Veli-Matti Karhulahti

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