THE MENTAL VIRUS: AN IDEA WORTH HAVING?

Abstract
If the human mind can be correctly characterized as a kind of
computational system, it would not be unreasonable to ask
whether it is possible that there exist the psychological
analogues of computer viruses. A similar line of reasoning can
be seen when Dawkins introduced the idea of the meme
(1989) as the social-epistemological parallel of his ideas about
genes as the primary agents of biological evolution, and he
has talked about this in terms which consciously borrow from
the language of the biology of viruses (e.g. infection,
epidemiology, replicators). However, neither Dawkins nor other
supporters of this idea explore the extension of this metaphor
to cognitive psychology (as opposed to cultural evolution). This
paper examines the scientific utility of the metaphor “mental
virus” in psychology, and surveys phenomena which are
possible token instances of this concept, such as
schizophrenic delusions, supernormal stimuli, and archetypal
narratives. Key to the hypothesized workings of the mental
virus is analogical processes, and an exemplar computational
model in the form of the LISA architecture is used to illustrate.
Keywords: mental virus, LISA, analogy, delusions,
supernormal stimuli, archetypes, self-replication

If stealing ideas were really his yardstick for greatness, then Picasso would have loved
cognitive psychology. In the last few decades, it has done brisk business in appropriating
concepts (sometime whole frameworks) from the computer sciences. This has all been a
consequence of the rise of the cognitive paradigm in psychology, with the upshot of this
being the replacement of the mechanical metaphor of the mind with the mind-as-computer
image. It has become almost second nature to many in the field to think of the mind as
“software”, therapy as “re-programming”, social structures as “networks”, and harried
undergraduates as “multitasking”. The translation is sometimes awkward, with metaphor-
mixing sometimes leading to confusion, but on the whole it has satisfied the need for new
concepts that reflect the new understanding of human thinking.

In the tradition of not fixing what seems to work well enough, I propose to extend the crime-
spree to the computer virus, which has so far not found a willing thief. In this paper I will try
to discuss the prospects for the scientific viability of the “mental virus”, what kind of construct
it might be, and where might we find examples of it in the wild.

MEMES AND VIRUSES

In inventing the concept of the meme (or at least branding and popularizing it), Richard
Dawkins was able to find a fertile new domain where he could apply his framework about
replication, mutation, survival and evolution. In his book “The Selfish Gene”, he argues that
the true protagonists in the natural selection process were not species or individual
organisms, but genes (Dawkins 1989). The landscape of inner space according to Dawkins
is now re-populated by with genes as primary agents, structured in ways to preserve their
coherence across numerous cell divisions and competing with other versions of the same
gene (alleles). A certain family of genes would be successful if more of their kind make it into
the next generation of “vehicles”, which is the unflattering term for organisms like you and
me who merely serve as receptacles for these prolific entities.
By these criteria, the grand-masters of the genetic tournament would have to be viruses.
They are deadly efficient at the propagation of genes because that is all they are built to do.
Without the distractions of survival that plague other organisms (i.e. like needing to feed),
viruses can concentrate on pure replication through the assistance of their unfortunate hosts.

In the latter half of his book, Dawkins becomes even more thoughtful and takes the gene as
an abstraction that could be applied to the propagation of ideas within a community of
information processors. Seen this way, the meme would be the social epistemological
analog of the gene, and could be conferred with equivalent qualities: memes have vehicles
in the form of individual minds; “viruses of the mind” would alter their “hosts” to sustain the
meme’s existence (i.e. in memory or consciousness); and of most interest to Dawkins,
memes that are the most likely to get communicated to other minds would be the most
successful (Dawkins 1989).

Elaborating further, Dawkins (1993) draws on the computer virus as further grist for his
meme-mill. This other metaphor, compared to the biological virus, proves much more apt for
Dawkins’ purposes since it is an example of an alien replicator that is already cognitive. It
seems that all of the apparatus needed for a computational framing of the meme thesis is
already in this neat package: it can reproduce, it is usually contagious, and the viruses which
are exceptional at both of these while evading the computer’s defenses would be the ones
that would prosper. He then goes on (much too quickly I think) to a discussion of how the
success of religions can be explained by likening them to computer viruses. While
entertaining, this decent into polemic is less edifying, and I think Dawkins stumbles a bit in
his defense of science when he tries to show that it is not a virus of the mind.

Though the discussion about memes proved generative, in some ways it was not productive
enough. Despite joining the fray, Dennett as a philosopher of mind could have done more to
explore the implications of treating seriously the concept of a mental virus. Other writers like
Blackmore (1999) recognize that there needs to be an account of the neural or cognitive
basis of memetic action, but it is unlikely that this program will be successful. Too much of
the meme concept was constructed as a social phenomenon and so it is an unwarranted
reification to attempt to pin its locus to the brain. The prime credential of memehood is the
act of being transferred and “replicated” in another person’s mind; there seems no obvious
principled way to posit characteristics that would pick out a meme that happens to reside in
an individual’s mind, just as there are no inherent characteristics that distinguish money
(paper, plastic cards, coins, cowrie shells, poker chips, cigarettes) from other objects that are
not monetary instruments. A theory of preferences would not seem to help, since not all
things a person might like have the potential to be a meme. Invoking evolutionary
psychology to focus on elements that have universal appeal would be a misstep since that
would simply indicate that the real level of analysis should be genetic and not memetic. The
project of grounding memes in neuroscience is, I think, an ill-formed question born of the
reification of something social, interpersonal. The only thing that neuroscience would have a
handle on is to explain the process by which humans copy each other, and no meme-
concept need be involved to do this.

I believe that the more interesting extension of the concept of memes is to take seriously the
idea that there could be “viruses of the mind”, and to frame this statement not as an
epidemiological phenomenon as Dawkins has done, but as an exercise in cognitive virology:
if there could exist mental states which are the equivalents of viruses in terms of their effects
on the cognitive system, what characteristics could we expect of them and through what
processes would they be initiated and maintained? In this light, a mental virus operates
within an ecology consisting not of interacting minds but of interdependent mental systems
which could be recruited by the virus into its own patterns of activity.
 Computer virus Mental virus

Exploits vulnerabilities in a Some states or conditions can make initiation more

computational system successful

Might make copies of itself Becomes more accessible or structure is applied to

other concepts

Is not readily detected by the system Might operate non-consciously and automatically

Intentionally designed Usually not intentionally designed

Can rapidly become integral to the Co-opts motivational, learning, and decision-
system making systems
Table 1: Comparison between features of computer viruses and mental viruses

THE MENTAL VIRUS: FROM METAPHOR TO HYPOTHESIS

The mental virus can be posited as a concept or cognitive structure that alters mental
processing and becomes rapidly ubiquitous within a mind. This paper takes it for granted
that concepts and schemata are basic structures of cognition. While certainly not
incontrovertible, Harnad’s (2005) claim that “to cognize is to categorize” (and therefore, to
conceptualize) is not obviously false and is useful in discussions where the level of analysis
might be at some molar, syntactic level. Nor does this reflect a bias that this paper might
have for representational systems, since schemata, which will be important later in the
paper, can be instantiated even in non-representational systems (e.g. dynamic systems).
Also, it is the intention of this paper to trace out a particular route from perceptions to mental
change, and it will not try to address how such change could happen through other avenues
that are less explicitly cognitive, such as a thorough-going biological account.

If the idea of a mental virus is to have any meaning at all, even as a metaphor, it must be
distinguished from other, more tame concepts that can be introduced into and be generated
in a mind. An idea that becomes adopted (i.e. represented and elaborated) by a mental
system and eventually causes large and long-term changes in that system is not
automatically a mental virus. For one thing, the changes should be effected in an unusually
rapid manner in contrast to what is observed in normal adult personality change. Also, the
changes should not just be at the level of content and memory, but should be reflected in
more fundamental changes in mental architecture, meaning that the mental virus should
have become integral to the way other concepts are processed.

By this token, an earworm is not a mental virus. An earworm is the phenomenon whereby
some auditory experience, usually a musical segment, repeatedly intrudes on a person’s
conscious experience without being volitionally recalled (i.e. an involuntary memory).
Although uncontrollably ubiquitous, it does not make fundamental changes to how other
kinds of information is processed by the mind. This then is a close analogy to conventional
distinctions between computer viruses and computer worms.

The requirement for rapid implementation needs to be examined more closely. After all, what
does it mean to be “rapid” in psychological terms? Assuming the definition that mental
viruses will have to be initiated through non-conscious processes (or at least through what
might be called the “peripheral route” by Petty and Cacioppo, 1986; Eagly and Chaiken
1993), this means that it will have to exploit implicit learning mechanisms (Reber 1989; Sun,
Lane, and Mathews 2009). This is the path along which we develop things like procedural
memories for how your body learns to ride a bike, or emotional conditioning like gaining a
dread of certain days of the week because of doctors’ appointments. Compared to more
explicit, conscious learning, implicit learning takes time and repeated exposure to develop
before it becomes an integral part of the mental system. Mental viruses, on the other hand,
are hypothetically expedited through this process because of the particular ways in which
they interact with perceptual and associational systems of the mind. This is due as much to
the character of a specific mental system as it is to the inherent properties of the mental
virus itself. Rapidity then is relative to what might be expected from implicit learning
processes, which otherwise is the primary way in which non-conscious matter affects
fundamental cognitive processes.

Putative mental virus Specific exploited vulnerability

Archetypal narrative elements (e.g. openness to emotional experience, culturally

hero, fate, war) accepted forms

Supernormal stimuli evolutionarily shaped needs,

Hypnotic suggestion socially constructed expectations, tendency to

suspend reflexivity

Schizophrenic delusion unusually rapid mental associations, suspended

reality testing

Core elements of an ideology need for closure/certainty,

Table 2: Examples of hypothetical mental viruses and the cognitive vulnerabilities that might
facilitate their initiation and flourishing.

What are these fundamental processes that are hypothesized to be vulnerable to mental
viruses? They would presumably be those parts of the mind that deal with concepts and
other mental representations (such as representations of body states). The mental virus,
once it becomes part of a representational system, might force it to restructure through some
form of adaptive accommodation in the Piagetian sense (1977). Likely victims then would be
top-down constructs like the structure and content of the self-concept, regulatory processes,
motivations, conceptual fluency, and top-down perceptual biasing. Processes that might be
less vulnerable could be more bottom-up constructs like perceptual binding, conditioning and
inductive reasoning. The distinction is made because bottom-up process are more often
hard-wired into the system, while top-down processes tend to be more tractable. By the
same token, computer viruses would most often prey on operating systems to then achieve
control over the more specialized software that runs bits and parts of the hardware rather
than target these parts first.

Mental viruses are initiated from percepts, and can have more than one source percept. Like
other percepts, it becomes analyzed and reconstructed, categorized, and eventually stored
in memory. It then becomes crucial that it be retrieved with increasing frequency, most
probably through non-conscious processes, or consciously perceivable as involuntary
memory (Mace 2007). This constant retrieval means that the viral concept already has to
hold some attraction for the mental system, or is kept salient through subsequent related
percepts or other concurrent mental events. Because frequent retrieval and representation
tends to destabilize the memory trace (engram), leading to changes in either the memory or
how it might be represented (Dudai 2004), this could serve as the mechanism by which
some analogue of virus mutation could take place. It is mutation that makes biological
viruses supremely viable as “survival machines” (Dawkins 1989) since it allows them to
exploit opportunities presented by an organism’s constitution in ways that it previously might
not have been capable of. Computer viruses, on the other hand, are artifacts fashioned with
an intention that it be effective, and thus its viability is all due to its design. Mental viruses
would then in this regard be closer to biological viruses in that it has to be opportunistic and
flexible enough in order to prosper or to have any memetic potential, since under even
moderate forms of the multiple realizability hypothesis (Bickle 2008) human mental
architectures can be radically different across individuals.

ANALOGICAL REPLICATION

This paper, so far, has been relatively free (though hopefully not reckless) with its
speculation, but it might be beyond its scope to actually spell out how mental viruses might
effect changes within a mind and achieve ubiquitous accessibility. The fact is that it is not
even clear how normal concepts might go about doing these things, much less imagining
how an exotic construct could achieve the same feats. So let us embark on an even more
speculative turn and posit that it might be analogical thinking processes that are key to the
effectiveness of a mental virus. Specifically, let me pose the idea that mental viruses are
analogical schemata that have run amok in the mind.

It has been variously pointed out by philosophers of mind and language and by cognitive
scientists that analogy and metaphor are ubiquitous in the mundane operations of human
thinking (e.g. Pinker 2007). Analogy is thought to be one of the primary ways by which old
experiences can be applied to new instances, and thus a major process involved in the
creation of new knowledge. In some computational models of inductive reasoning such as
the LISA architecture (Hummel and Holyoak 2002), it can be clearly seen that analogical
processes can underwrite the formation of complex hierarchical knowledge structures. The
result is that analogical schemata can serve to encode the relationships between the most
basic cognitive units or between highly compressed structures that might be analogical
representations themselves. This highly generative nature of analogies make them the ideal
catalysts for a hypothetical rapid mental infection, which is the type of process that we would
like to ascribe to a mental virus.

In order for a schema to be more than the garden variety and be viral, there should be a
strong tendency for that particular schema to be applied to knowledge domains outside its
original context. Available terms in the literature are “informationally unencapsulated” or
“isotropic” (Fodor 2000; Shanahan 2009), labels which were originally used to characterize
features of the so-called “frame problem” in philosophy. Though it is beyond the ambit of this
paper to discuss the frame problem, it has some relevance here since the concern was over
the boundaries of cognitive units such as beliefs and how this bounding can be implemented
by a limited cognitive system. Even as this potential promiscuity is a general problem of
cognitive agents, it opens the possibility that some units are more promiscuous than others
in this sense. This then would be a proto-virus: for it to be a full fledged viral agent it would
also need the capacity to either bind itself to a wide variety of knowledge structures such that
it is invoked in an unusually great number of contexts, or be able to restructure knowledge
structures in its own image so that the structure of the analog becomes ubiquitous across
various domains.

Hummel and Holyoak (2002) give us clues to how either of the two might happen through
their LISA model of analogical reasoning. The first route could happen if the proto-virus is
already stored as an analogical schema. LISA is structured to abstract information about
cognitive units that happen to be constituted of shared semantic elements. For example, as
part of an analogy, LISA might detect that the concepts "dog" and "gold fish" might share the
elements "pet" and "indoors". The resulting analogical representation includes the
intersection of the concepts involved in the analogy and will therefore be sensitive to
activation of those concepts they have in common. If it its possible that there could exist an
analogical schema so flexible as to be activated by many instances then this characteristic
would be consistent with the concept of a mental virus. Natural languages already betray this
tendency given our use of spatial metaphors to convey things like dominance status
(“climbing the corporate ladder”, “at the bottom of the hierarchy”) or quality of relationship (“a
close collaboration”). Indeed, it might be argued that these instances can already serve as
examples of our mental viruses, but their developmental origins will make it hard to assess
how rapidly they were adopted by a young mind learning both the semantics and pragmatics
of a language.

The second possibility might happen through a process wherein a schema is induced which
bears a similar structure to one of its source instances, specifically the proto-virus, so that
there is a causal relationship between the structure of the proto-virus and the structure of the
induced analog. This new schema is then applied to other cognitive units which would then
replicate the structure further, which at this point is now the self-replicating mental virus (see
figure 1). This reproduction of self-similar units is a feature common in nature and is also
seen in simulations such as cellular automata. In psychological terms, an example of this is
the application of archetypal narrative elements to various scales of experience. The
metaphor of “war”, for example, as an archetypal structure of conflict, might be first
apprehended as applying to large-scale societal conflict (e.g. “Egypt is at war with Assyria”),
but once conceived, the analogy could be applied at the personal scale (e.g. “I am besieged
by critics”), which could lead to the tendency to apply it to still further contexts (e.g. “the war
of science against religion). In each of these applications, it is the structure of analogy that is
replicated rather than the content, and it is the structure that becomes ubiquitous, but in so
doing, it also makes the particular instances of the structure more accessible to the cognitive
system.

Clearly, both routes rely on the proto-virus being preferentially activated and accessible for
other processes/structures to recruit. This will depend upon both the inherent features of the
proto-virus and the specific vulnerabilities of the cognitive system. The next section of this
essay will examine two mental states which are possibly conducive to the generation and
proliferation of mental viruses.

a a
a a
aaaaaaaaa ---- x ====> a
a a
a a

Figure 1: How cognitive structure might be replicated across schemata

SUPERNORMAL STIMULI
Supernormal stimuli are thought to be exaggeratedly potent versions of qualities that are
already preferred through biases developed through evolution. An example would be the
classic experiments done by Tinberg on Herring Gulls (ten Cate 2009): chicks’ pecking
behavior (related to food-begging) has been found to be triggered by visual features of the
parent’s head, specifically the white coloring and the red spot on a yellow beak; this behavior
could be substantially enhanced by presenting a clearly artificial analog consisting of a
knitting needle with white bands, to the extent that chicks would prefer this to a more realistic
model of a herring gull head. Models of animal learning have labelled this increased
preference for exaggerated, novel traits as the peak-shift phenomenon (Lynn, Cnaani and
Papaj 2005). This observed tendency has been incorporated in human evolutionary
psychology explanations of addiction related behaviors by hypothesizing that modern culture
has produced supernormal versions of traits that originally served as markers of adaptive
options, and this is thought to lead to over-consumption in situations of overabundance or
the development of non-adaptive behaviors (Barrett 2009).
Given that supernormal stimuli already have ready purchase in the mind due to their
evolutionary advantage, a proto-virus mental state with sufficient supernormal characteristics
would have the mechanism it requires to be unusually accessible and be regularly retrieved.
Mechanisms described in the LISA architecture could then convert this advantage into a
structural one by generating schemata that would be both extensively applied and also
generate more, self-similar schemata. By this we might mean that, for example, the
attraction engendered in a male by a certain waist-to-hip ratio might be subtly extended to
other objects or concepts (e.g. vases, architectural features, harmonic proportions). That this
cross-modal mixing of metaphors is possible is illustrated by cases of synesthesia, and
neuroscientists now assume that a limited form of this sensory confusion happens even in
non-synesthetes (for example, see Crisinel and Spence 2010). The effect of this cross-
pollination and replication is to make the mental system even more sensitive to the
supernormal stimulus since exposure or retrieval of it will now activate a whole family of
related and self-similar schemata. This then serves to ensure that the conceptual form, if not
the content, of our supernormal-virus gains the ubiquity it needs to flourish, maybe at the
expense of other meaningful concepts. The upshot of this could be the growing preference
for more extreme versions of the stimuli as the calculus of reward and availability is re-
calibrated, thus leading to the peak-shift phenomenon. We might imagine that the tyranny
exerted by our increasingly unreal standards of beauty owes its effectiveness to such a
process, whereby a supernormal proto-virus involving adaptive preferences for signals of
reproductive health eventually becomes a full-fledged mental virus that re-sets the
preference weights assigned to stimuli and might lead to more extreme preferences.

SCHIZOPHRENIC DELUSIONS

Key features of schizophrenic delusions make them prime candidates as hypothetical mental
viruses. Certain themes tend to be over-represented in the content of delusions: sex, religion
and mysticism, ubiquity (as in all-pervading conspiracies, or constant supernatural
messages), and exceptionality (being singled out, either for exultation or persecution). These
could hint at viral schemata being promiscuously applied to innocuous and irrelevant
experiences. In this case, aside from relevant stimuli having potent mental effects because
of their inherent perceived features, special vulnerabilities of the psychotic state facilitate the
flourishing of delusion-viruses.

The systemic feature that makes the schizophrenic mind unusually receptive ground for
mental viruses is an exaggerated fluency of thinking, to which Eysenck (1994) applied the
term “over-inclusive” . Using the computational framework that we adopted earlier, we seem
to have here a mental system for which the frame problem is a practical difficulty which it
fails to solve efficiently. Things which most other minds would have no problem construing as
unrelated would tempt the over-inclusive mind into applying or crafting schemata which
would make that leap over the epistemological chasm. Following LISA, this might be a
consequence of having unusually elaborated conceptual structures, which would provide
analogical processes with more meaningful overlaps with which to construct generalized
schemata.

Within a schizophrenic system, schemata are generated and reinforced at a much more
frenetic pace because of hyperactive associations which result in increased simultaneous
activations, the fodder for a LISA-type analogy generator. Competition will result in more
inclusive schemata being favored over narrower ones, which means they have a tendency to
accrue more agglomerations and become even more elaborated. In a kind of runaway
development, the larger individual conceptual structures become, the easier it is for them to
be linked together because they will increasingly have more conceptual units in common.
This might contribute to the totalitarian ubiquity of psychotic delusions, which leads me to
suspect that a schizophrenic mind at its later stages is a system thoroughly restructured by
mental viruses, by which I mean that most of its content is informed by a relatively small
number of very potent analogical patterns. In effect, even as it is extremely rich in content
generation because of hyper-active associations, the schizophrenic mind paradoxically
suffers from a poverty of logical diversity because a few constructs have successfully
dominated the “market” of available schemata. This leads to the observation that even as
schizophrenics display unusual associative flexibility, they seem at the same time rigid in
how they apply their reasoning to experience (e.g. Brankovic and Paunovic 1999; Owen,
Cutting and David 2007).

CONCLUSION

It is partly my intention, in introducing the concept of mental viruses, to motivate a new inter-
disciplinary interface between the various wings of the cognitive science camp. Previous
interactions over such critical topics such as memory and learning, decision-making, visual
processing, and natural languages have borne much fruit, and so I propose a new expedition
into the territory of pathological cognitive science, an area previously surveyed by the much
admired heuristics and biases research tradition (see Evans 2009). Though the points raised
seem abstruse and unfalsifiable, they are actually amenable to empirical tests. One test for
the cross-modal viral spread of supernormal stimuli would be to see if a growing preference
for sweets correspond to an increased preference for “sweet” music, which is directly
inspired by the experiment of Crisinel and Spence (2010). Likewise, the proposal that
schizophrenic delusions reflect both increasing cognitive complexity and decreasing
conceptual diversity could be initially tested through computer modelling and possibly
through psycholinguistic work. Even if such work is undertaken, however, the fortunes of the
mental virus as a concept ultimately resides in the question of whether it has the potency to
colonize the minds of my readers.

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