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When seeing is not believing: Secular and religious children’s justifications for belief in unobservable entities

Wed, April 7, 4:30 to 5:30pm EDT (4:30 to 5:30pm EDT), Virtual

Abstract

Due to the difficulty of directly observing religious (e.g., God) and some scientific (e.g., germs) entities, children are dependent on others’ testimony to learn about them (Harris et al., 2006). This testimony, however, may differ depending on children’s own religious background (Cui et al., 2020). Indeed, by kindergarten, U.S. children’s beliefs about the plausibility of different events are impacted by their religious background (Corriveau et al., 2015). How are secular and religious children’s beliefs about what is real influenced by exposure to a broader variety of testimony later in childhood?

In this study, we asked religious (Christian) and secular U.S. children from two age groups (74 5-7-year-olds & 48 9-11-year-olds) about their belief in commonly-endorsed scientific and religious entities and the epistemic justifications for their beliefs (“How do you know [entity] exists?”). Children from both age groups and religious backgrounds were confident in the existence of scientific entities (see Figure 1). We also found that (1) older children were less confident in the existence of religious entities (significant interaction between age and entity domain; GLMM F(1, 663) = 25.27, p < .001) and (2) secular children displayed a greater difference in their confidence about the existence of scientific versus religious entities than religious children (significant interaction between entity domain and religious background; F(1, 663) = 70.67, p < .001).

Children’s epistemic justifications were coded for mention of a testimonial source for their belief, an encounter with the entity, or elaboration about features of the entity. As depicted in Figure 2a, children’s justifications concerning scientific entities followed similar patterns across both age groups and religious backgrounds (mixed-effects binomial logistic regression; no main effects of age or religious background, p’s > .600). Consistent with past research (Davoodi et al., 2020; Harris et al., 2006), children frequently elaborated about scientific entities. There was a significant three-way interaction between age, religious background, and explanation type (OR = 5.88, p = .021) for children’s justifications about religious entities. Overall, children frequently justified their beliefs using elaboration, but as shown in Figure 2b, secular children were more likely to refer to encounters than religious children and older religious children cited sources more frequently than the other groups of children.

Together, these findings indicate that both religious and secular U.S. children are receiving testimony that supports the existence of commonly-endorsed scientific entities. This is reflected in their beliefs and their tendency to elaborate to justify their belief—a reflection of community consensus. In contrast, children may receive differing testimony about religious entities depending on their religious background, resulting in different levels of confidence about the existence of these entities and different patterns of epistemic justification. Children’s age also impacted their belief in religious entities. Older children expressed more skepticism and nominated testimony more in their justifications for religious entities, either referencing others’ lack of an encounter with or a source for their belief. This sensitivity to testimony may reflect that older children are more aware of variation in religious belief within their broader community than younger children.

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