Poster #56 - The Development of Religious Parochialism in Peruvian Children

• In Event: Poster Session 02

Abstract

While early childhood is characterized by a growing proclivity to engage in prosocial behavior and to be attuned to norms of fairness, children are simultaneously developing increased sensitivity to social groups. Much work has previously explored children’s attitudes about and behaviors towards members of in-groups and out-groups, both in the context of “minimal groups” (Dunham et al., 2011) and real-world groups, such as racial (Pauker et al., 2017) and gender (La Freniere et al., 1984) groups. Religious in-group bias serves as a particularly interesting case study because group identification is often based on unobservable personal beliefs and ideologies. Research in this domain has shown that in areas of ethno-religious conflict, children exhibit a preference for those who share their religious identification (i.e., Shamoa-Nir et al., 2021).
The current study aims to shed light on the phenomena of religious parochialism in childhood and to evaluate the extent to which taking God’s perspective, which has been shown to mitigate parochialism in adults (Ginges et al., 2014; Pasek et al., 2020), may have similar or opposing effects in children. Moreover, this study can contribute to our understanding of developmental religious cognition in non-WEIRD cultures, allowing for new insight into how previously unstudied populations evaluate religious groups.
To address these questions, we presented young children (5- to 10-year-olds; N = 65) in an urban setting in Peru with a modified third-party Dictator Game. Each participant was asked a set of eleven questions about their own religious beliefs and practices, and these items were sorted based on participants’ responses (indicating identification with a religious group or a non-religious group). The items participants identified with were shuffled and randomly paired in order to introduce three pairs of characters. In each pair, one character was described as having the religious beliefs and practices the participant identified with, and one of the characters was described as not having these religious beliefs and practices. Participants were first asked to divide six hypothetical cookies between the characters in these pairs however they want to (Self Condition). Next, depending on the condition, they were asked to divide another set of six hypothetical cookies however they thought God would want to (God Condition) or however they thought an adult would want to (Adult Condition).
We will test three main hypotheses in accordance with our preregistration. First, we expect that children will show an in-group bias when they are responsible for dividing resources between two targets. We will test this hypothesis by running a linear mixed model with donations to the ingroup. Second, we expect that in the God condition, children will allocate more resources to religious characters than to non-religious characters and will be more biased than in the Self condition. We will test this hypothesis by again running a linear mixed model with donations to the religious target and conducting a paired t-test. Third, we hypothesize that in the Adult condition, children will allocate resources equally to religious and non-religious characters and will be less biased than in the Self condition.

Authors

• Abby McLaughlin, Boston College

• Sophie Riddick, Boston College
  Presenting Author

• Katherine McAuliffe, Boston College

• Samantha Bangayan

• Aaron Baker