Which example illustrates a 'one-violation' concept in Pascal Boyer's theory that people often find plausible?

• A. A ghost or god is a person with no body
• B. A chair that walks
• C. A tree that talks
• D. A rock that floats

Answer: (A)

In Pascal Boyer’s framework, beliefs that are minimally counterintuitive—things that mostly fit our everyday understanding but have one small violation—are particularly plausible and memorable. This pattern works because the mind can reconcile most of the familiar details while the single odd feature stands out just enough to be interesting, yet not so contradictory that the idea becomes impossible to picture.

The best example here is a disembodied person—someone described as a ghost or a god who is still a person in mind but lacks a body. It keeps the core attribute of personhood and agency, but the body is the one feature that’s missing. That single deviation from the usual “person = body” rule is precisely the kind of minimal violation that makes such ideas feel plausible and easy to entertain, which is why disembodied persons show up so often in religious thought and storytelling.

The other options involve violations that are more than a single deviation from core expectations. A chair that walks, for instance, changes an object’s category and physics—something an inanimate object isn’t supposed to do. A tree that talks clashes with plant biology and typical forms of communication. A rock that floats contradicts gravity and material properties. These represent broader departures from ordinary categories, so they don’t illustrate the single-violation pattern as cleanly as the disembodied person does.