Poster #178 - Indonesian Muslim children’s understanding of death and afterlife

• In Event: 2-055 - Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Section - Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Integrative Statement

What do children understand about death and how do cultural discourses about death and afterlife inform that understanding? Research on children’s understanding of death indicates that from the preschool years through school age children increasing understand different aspects of death such as cessation, irreversibility, universality/applicability, and causation (Brent & Speece, 1996). In addition, as older children better understand biological death, they also increasingly attribute continued mental and emotional functioning to the dead, especially when primed with religion (Astuti & Harris, 2008). Although the predominant pattern of development that has been found cross-culturally shows children and adults more often attribute mental functioning after death, research by Watson-Jones, Busch, Legare and Harris (2016) conducted in Vanuatu indicated that participants also responded that bodily functions would continue after death, perhaps influenced by the Christian theology of recent missionaries to the country. Previous research on children’s understanding of death has been conducted primarily with children from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) countries (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010). In addition, research has not separately addressed children’s understanding of both biological and supernatural models of death and which they prefer to use to explain death. The present study focused on Indonesian Muslim children and assessed both biological and supernatural understandings of death. In addition, the study examined explanation preferences and integration of types of explanations for death. Children ages 10-15 from Islamic backgrounds in Jakarta, Indonesia, participated in an interview session consisting of three components. In the first section children were asked questions concerning the biological dimensions of death (inevitability, applicability, irreversibility, cessation of function, and unpredictability) and parallel nonbiological dimensions of death (religious and cultural beliefs about the above five dimensions). In the second section, children were presented with narratives about characters who had died and then asked questions about causality (“Why do you think X died?”), cessation of function (“What happened to X’s body when X died?,” “What happened to X’s mind when X died?”), unpredictability (“Who knew exactly when X was going to die?”), and irreversibility (“Once X died, could s/he become alive again?”). Children’s responses to those open-ended questions were coded as biological, religious/cultural, both, or other. The final section of the interview consisted of questions similar to those used by Watson-Jones and colleagues (2016). These 14 questions asked about the continuity of biological and psychological functions after death. Overall, both younger children (10-11 years of age) and older children (12-15 years of age) demonstrated a clear understanding of biological death and few children responded that any kind of functioning, biological or psychological, continues after death. Children’s responses to questions about the nonbiological dimensions of death were more variable in terms of correspondence with Indonesian Islamic beliefs about death and afterlife. Both younger and older children especially endorsed religious explanations for the dimensions of unpredictability and irreversibility. The results suggest that belief in psychological continuity after death may not completely capture how the afterlife is conceptualized by children in all cultures.

Authors

• Melanie Nyhof, Northwestern College
  Presenting Author

• Claire White Kravette, California State University, Northridge
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rena Latifa, UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta
  Non-Presenting Author