Religion as a Belief System: Changing Understandings of God's Mental States across Development

• In Event: The Multifaceted Nature of Religious Belief, Practice, and Identity across Development and Culture

Abstract

One way to conceptualize religion, particularly in the United States, is as a set of beliefs about the supernatural. We asked how children living in this culture conceptualize God's mind as compared with human minds. On the one hand, children frequently receive "theologically correct" testimony describing God's mind as quite different from that of a person (Barrett, 1999). Because even young children learn from others' testimony (Harris et al., 2018), they may readily distinguish God from a person. On the other hand, young children also commonly attribute their own mental states to other minds. Although theory of mind (TOM)—the ability to accurately attribute mental states to others—emerges around four years, it continues to develop throughout elementary school (Wellman et al., 2001). The current work tested children at this developmental period to arbitrate between these two competing predictions, i.e., to determine the extent to which children distinguished between humans' and God's minds.

In Study 1, 5- to 8-year-olds and adults reported the degree to which they themselves, another person, and God would believe that good behaviors (e.g., helping others) and bad behaviors (e.g., harming others) were okay or not okay. Adults drew stronger distinctions among agents than did children; for instance, adults—but not children—distinguished between their own and God's moral beliefs (Fig. 1).

Study 2 built on this work to probe TOM's role in God concepts more directly. We gave 4- to 7-year-olds a standard TOM battery and asked them whether God would know when they and other people transgressed. Older children attributed greater knowledge to God than did younger children. TOM mediated this difference (Fig. 2), indicating that the capacity to distinguish human minds from one another may underlie the propensity to distinguish God's mind from human minds (by attributing to God greater knowledge than a human would possess).

Finally, Study 3 asked how 4- to 7-year-olds and adults expected God to respond to transgressions once God became aware of them. Again, adults drew stronger distinctions between humans and God than did children. Adults—but not children—expected God to punish less severely than would humans. Adults also differed in their expectations regarding how God would respond to transgressions. For instance, adults were more likely to attribute emotional responses (e.g., encouraging forgiveness) to God than to humans, whereas children rarely attributed emotional responses to any agent.

Taken together, these studies demonstrate that the propensity to distinguish God's mind from human minds emerges gradually across development. As participants become better able to distinguish human minds from one another, they also draw stronger distinctions between God and humans. These findings suggest that concepts of God's supernatural mind are rooted in concepts of more ordinary human minds and highlight the importance of studying religion as a system of beliefs about supernatural agents.

Authors

• Larisa Heiphetz Solomon, Columbia University
  Presenting Author

• Abby McLaughlin, Boston College

• Ayse Payir, Boston University