What would Micky Mouse do?: Mickey Mouse and the origins of devotion

Nobody lies awake at night contemplating the existence of Mickey Mouse.

Mickey Mouse is the world’s most famous rodent. His conceptual existence is unquestionably true, and his physical existence is unquestionably false. He is, after all, fictional. Despite his widespread reach, it is generally assumed that no one lets the existence (or inexistence) of Mickey Mouse trouble them and no adult turns to a lone star and prays for Mickey Mouse to deliver them a miracle. Why is this an assumption? What makes questioning the existence of Mickey Mouse more bizarre than questioning the existence of a god?

The Mickey Mouse problem sprouted from these questions. It attempts to distinguish people’s beliefs in fictional supernatural beings from gods. It raises two important theological questions: Why do we fail to believe in some entities, and why do we fail to become committed to some entities? The problem itself refers to the difficulty in predicting which counterintuitive agents are capable of inspiring religious belief and devotion. Counterintuitive agents are beings or entities that defy intuitive — or “folk” — expectations of how the world is. For example, a ghost is a person who follows all expectations we have about people (i.e. adhering to folk psychology) and who can walk through walls, defying our intuitions about physics (i.e. violating folk physics).

“Why do we fail to believe in some entities, and why do we fail to become committed to some entities?”

Mickey Mouse was likely chosen as the token character as he seems to claim a sort of fanaticism that is often comparable to religious zeal. In 2022, a Reddit post went viral on Twitter when a Disney adult claimed to have traded catering at her wedding for a Mickey and Minnie Mouse appearance. The post sparked a professor of religious studies at Lehigh University, Jodi Eicherler-Levine, to respond in defense of Disney adults. She claimed, “By its power in people’s lives, then Disney is as much a religion as anything.”

Her claim is one rooted in practices and rituals as opposed to a theological claim. And she is not the first to have made the claim, academics have discussed Disney parks as ritual spaces and pilgrimage centers since the ‘80s. Yet, even with these claims, Mickey Mouse has still failed to reach the type of devotion that deities hold.

A study conducted by Professors Thomas Swan and Jamin Halberstadt of the University of Otago sought to define this divide. The researchers asked participants on an online crowdsourcing marketplace to complete one of two surveys. The surveys consisted of three tasks, always in the same order, and differed in whether the word “fictional,” defined as an entity “that people generally do not believe exists,” or “religious,” defined as an entity “that many people believe exists, and that is part of a religion,” was used in the instructions.

The first task asked participants to “invent a new religious [fictional] being or entity with supernatural abilities,” list five supernatural abilities it would possess, and rate the potential threat and benefit it posed. Next, participants were presented with a “list of supernatural abilities that might apply to religious [fictional] beings and entities” and asked to rate how likely the ability was “to be attributed to a religious [fictional] being or entity.” The final task then requested participants to “name 5 well-known religious [fictional] beings or entities with supernatural abilities, from the past or present” and rate each entity they chose in terms of its potential harm and benefit. 

The abilities chosen by the participants, as well as the abilities they were presented with, were coded by what folk domain they violated. The categories were psychology, biology, physics, none, and nonspecific or multiple domain violations. Entities prescribed as religious were more associated with folk psychology–violating abilities. Additionally, abilities that violated nonspecific or multiple folk domains were more important for religious entities to possess than for fictional agents.

Participants rated both their invented and well-known religious entities on average as more potentially beneficial than the fictional entities. Individual religious entities also had smaller differences between their potential harm and benefit ratings, whereas fictional entities were typically rated as either almost entirely beneficial or harmful. This led researchers to conclude that these religious beings were seen as more ambivalent than the extreme heroism or villainy ratings the fictional entities were prescribed.

The researchers suggested a religious agent template, where an agent capable of becoming a god must have abilities that are ambiguous or violate folk psychology and are beneficial yet ambivalent. From this, they concluded that Mickey Mouse lacks the necessary ambiguity, beneficence, and ambivalence to inspire motivation that he is a god.

Another researcher at Oxford University, Nathan Cofnas, sought to answer the question of commitment. He looked at Santa Claus as an example. Santa has a list of counterintuitive, folk-violating abilities including flight, immortality, and moral knowledge. He also possesses credibility-enhancing displays — at least to some young children. Presents are left under trees and cookies and milk are consumed in the middle of the night on Christmas. As children age, they realize, at some point, Santa’s abilities are “impossible” for a human, and a layer of the magic is lost as they see Santa as too counterintuitive.

Mickey Mouse lacks credibility-enhancing displays. He lacks the evidence necessary to support our belief in his physical existence. In fact, the explicit message declaring his fictional-character origins as a work imagined by Walt Disney causes our common sense to deny any other possibility. Cofnas declares that even should “compelling evidence” to believe in Mickey Mouse’s physical existence exist, it is unlikely that his believers would sacrifice their lives for this belief.

Religion exists in two parts: practice and belief. With the internet and the rapid spread of pop culture, the line between what constitutes religious practice and casual enjoyment is blurring. Fandoms’ impact on people’s lives and habits is widely documented. However, impact alone does not constitute a belief so strong people are willing to sacrifice everything. The question of what makes a belief that strong is to be rooted in theological discussion. The Mickey Mouse problem and its solution help define the divide. The entities and beings we believe in appear to have universally similar characteristics that have persisted throughout cultures and times. These characteristics help us understand what takes hold in the collective’s minds and might help us understand each other and what we value as highly as our lives.