Secular and religious parents’ influence on children’s judgment about existence of unobservable entities in China

• In Event: 2-088 - The Development of Religious Concepts and Norms Across Cultures

Integrative Statement

When learning about the existence of unobservable phenomena such as germs or God, children must rely on testimony from others (Harris & Corriveau, 2014). Previous studies looking at children’s judgment about invisible phenomena have found surprising similarities in U.S. children’s understanding of the existence of scientific and religious unobservable entities (Harris et al., 2006), arguably due to young children’s reliance on others’ testimony in each case. In the current study, we asked about how such judgments might differ in a culture with a powerful secular influence: China. Although China is perceived as a secular culture, there has been a recent growth in Christian belief (Stark & Liu, 2011). We explore how secular and Christian Chinese children judge the existence of unobservable scientific and religious phenomena, and the relation between their judgments and those of their parents.

Secular children (43 5-7-year-olds, Mage = 6;2; 43 9-11-year-olds, Mage = 10;4) and Christian children (26 5-7-year-olds, Mage = 5;11; 20 9-11-year-olds, Mage = 9;8), and their parents were asked about the existence of 6 unobservable items: three scientific (oxygen, electricity and germ) and three religious entities (God, angel and heaven). Parents were asked to rate the existence of the 6 unobservable items on a 7-point scale from most possible (7) to least possible (1). Children were first asked: “Does __ exist” and then asked about their certainty: “How sure are you – very sure, or not very sure?” We used these two questions to create a 4-point scale from Very sure of Existence to Very sure of Non-existence. Children were also asked about “How do you know that __ exist/does not exist.”

Results of parents and children’s existent judgment are summarized in Figure 1.
Preschoolers and elementary-school children judged religious and scientific entities similarly to their parents. Mixed-effects ordinal logistic regression models on children’s judgment showed no difference between secular and Christian children on their judgment about scientific entities (β = -0.88, SE = 0.61, p = 0.15, OR = 0.41). All were very confident about the existence of scientific entities. However, a significant difference was found in the religious domain (β= 8.88, SE = 1.30, p < 0.001, OR = 41.71). Christian parents and children were highly confident about the existence of the religious entities, whereas secular parents and children were skeptical about the existence.

Since both parents and children were near ceiling in their judgment of scientific items, the potential influence of parents on children’s judgment about the religious items were explored through mixed-effects ordinal logistic regression models (Figure 2). Parents’ judgment of existence of the religious entities was a significant predictor of children’s judgments in the Christian community (β = 0.10, SE = 0.18, p = 0.55, OR = 1.11) but not in the secular community (β = -0.24, SE = 0.71, p = 0.73, OR = 0.78). We discuss the relation between parental testimony and community consensus when exploring variability in children’s understanding of scientific and religious entities across different communities.

Authors

• Yixin Kelly Cui, Boston University
  Presenting Author

• Jennifer M. Clegg, Texas State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Fang Eleanor Yan, Georgia State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Telli Davoodi, Boston University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Paul Harris, Harvard Graduate School of Education
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kathleen Helen Corriveau, Boston University
  Non-Presenting Author