Understanding of possibility among secular and Christian children in China

• In Event: The Power of Testimony and Culture in Children’s Developing Beliefs about the Invisible and Impossible

Abstract

Children have a good grasp of what could or could not happen in the physical world from an early age (Shtulman & Carey, 2007). However, religious background may render children more credulous toward the impossible. Previous literature showed that children with religious exposure are more likely to judge both religious and magical events as real (Corriveau et al., 2015; Davoodi et al., 2016). However, past studies have mainly been conducted in societies where religious beliefs are held by the majority. What would happen if children are growing up in a society where religious beliefs are held by only a minority?

The current study explored children’s judgment about what is real as opposed to fictional in a largely secular society - Mainland China. 62 5- to 6-year-old and 41 9- to 11-year-old children from secular and Christian families were asked to judge and justify the possibility of different events. The stories involved religious, ordinarily impossible events brought about by God’s intervention, Buddha’s intervention, or a magical power (e.g., a fairy), realistic events brought about by ordinary human intervention and included no impossible elements and unusual events that did not violate natural causal laws, but had a low probability of occurring. For example, the five versions of a story in which the protagonist tries to feed the hungry people in her town were as follows: 1) Religious-God: The protagonist turns a loaf of bread into many loaves with the help of God, 2) Religious-Buddha: The protagonist turns a loaf of bread into many loaves with the help of Buddha, 3) Magical: The protagonist turns a loaf of bread into many loaves with her magical powers, 4) Realistic: The protagonist goes to a nearby town to buy bread, and 5) Unusual: The protagonist finds many loaves of bread in the forest and takes them to her town.

A mixed binomial logistic model on children’s reality judgments yielded a significant three-way interaction between age group, religious affiliation and story type (see Figure 1). Further analyses by story type showed that in early childhood Chinese Christian children were more likely than Chinese secular children to judge both the religious-God and the religious-Buddha stories as real ps < .01. However, the group difference for the religious-Buddha story disappeared in late childhood. Further analyses on children’s justification implied that younger Christian children did not really buy in the power of Buddha. Instead, they justified the religious-Buddha story as real by mentioning other real aspects of the story, similar stories in Bible, coincidence or uninformative answers (e.g. I don’t know). In addition, the two groups were equally skeptical about the magical stories both in early childhood and in late childhood. Children’s judgment about realistic and unusual events did not differ based on their religious background. Overall, the results indicate that Christian Chinese children are not likely to extend their belief in the impossible via God’s intervention to other magical or divine powers, especially as they get older. The findings will be discussed in relation to the minority status of Christian children in China.

Authors

• Yixin Kelly Cui, Boston University
  Presenting Author

• Ayse Payir, Boston University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Telli Davoodi, Boston University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Paul Harris, Harvard University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kathleen H. Corriveau, Boston University
  Non-Presenting Author