Re-evaluating Fictional Narratives: Cognitive and (Cultural) Evolutionary Perspectives on the Absence of Fictionality in Human Societies

In this article, I argue that fictionality—understood as a form of "make-believe" that requires the audience to suspend disbelief—has been largely absent throughout most of human history. This is due to two key factors: 1) humans are not psychologically predisposed to recognize fictionality, as it is cognitively demanding, and 2) traditional societies often have worldviews that allow for promiscuous causal possibilities, preventing narratives from being marked as fictional by their implausibility. I review extensive ethnographic and historical evidence suggesting that stories we now consider fictional were largely regarded as factual accounts of the past or attempts at such accounts. Additionally, I offer a critical discussion of how the absence of fictionality in diverse human societies impacts evolutionary theorizing about fictionality, as well as the broader cognitive and social consequences of (the lack of) fictional narratives.