Cognitive Science 39 (2):353-382 (2015)
Abstract |
In two studies, 5- and 6-year-old children were questioned about the status of the protagonist embedded in three different types of stories. In realistic stories that only included ordinary events, all children, irrespective of family background and schooling, claimed that the protagonist was a real person. In religious stories that included ordinarily impossible events brought about by divine intervention, claims about the status of the protagonist varied sharply with exposure to religion. Children who went to church or were enrolled in a parochial school, or both, judged the protagonist in religious stories to be a real person, whereas secular children with no such exposure to religion judged the protagonist in religious stories to be fictional. Children's upbringing was also related to their judgment about the protagonist in fantastical stories that included ordinarily impossible events whether brought about by magic or without reference to magic . Secular children were more likely than religious children to judge the protagonist in such fantastical stories to be fictional. The results suggest that exposure to religious ideas has a powerful impact on children's differentiation between reality and fiction, not just for religious stories but also for fantastical stories
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Keywords | Fantasy Testimony Religion Impossibility |
Categories | (categorize this paper) |
DOI | 10.1111/cogs.12138 |
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References found in this work BETA
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Abraham Lincoln and Harry Potter: Children’s Differentiation Between Historical and Fantasy Characters.Kathleen H. Corriveau, Angie L. Kim, Courtney E. Schwalen & Paul L. Harris - 2009 - Cognition 113 (2):213-225.
The Development of Children's Beliefs About Prayer.Jacqueline Woolley & Katrina Phelps - 2001 - Journal of Cognition and Culture 1 (2):139-166.
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Citations of this work BETA
The Divided Mind of a Disbeliever: Intuitive Beliefs About Nature as Purposefully Created Among Different Groups of Non-Religious Adults.Elisa Järnefelt, Caitlin F. Canfield & Deborah Kelemen - 2015 - Cognition 140:72-88.
Parochial Prosocial Religions: Historical and Contemporary Evidence for a Cultural Evolutionary Process.Ara Norenzayan, Azim F. Shariff, Will M. Gervais, Aiyana K. Willard, Rita A. McNamara, Edward Slingerland & Joseph Henrich - 2016 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 39.
How Fictional Worlds Are Created.Deena Skolnick Weisberg - 2016 - Philosophy Compass 11 (8):462-470.
A Developmental Perspective on the Cultural Evolution of Prosocial Religious Beliefs.Kathleen H. Corriveau & Eva E. Chen - 2016 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 39.
Conceptual Similarities Among Fantasy and Religious Orientations: A Developmental Perspective.Rachel B. Thidodeau, Melissa M. Brown, Alexandra F. Nancarrow, Karrie E. Elpers & Ansley Tullos Gilpin - 2018 - Journal of Cognition and Culture 18 (1-2):31-46.
View all 9 citations / Add more citations
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