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

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Although we are not able to directly experience or encounter many everyday causal phenomena, beliefs in their existence can have a considerable influence on our behavior. According to social interactionist theories of development, and most notably the testimony hypothesis (Harris & Koenig, 2006), children rely heavily on the adult testimony prevalent in their communities to learn about typically unobservable entities and processes. Such socio-cultural forces are also assumed to play a significant role in children’s understanding of the boundaries of possibility. The current symposium explores the power of testimony and cultural consensus in the development of belief in the ontological status of the invisible and impossible in childhood.

Paper 1 presents natural linguistic variation in parent testimony about scientific and supernatural unobservable entities across three cultures – the United States, Iran and mainland China. Paper 2 focuses on how explicit belief statements provided by parents and strangers guide US children’s judgments about the existence of novel entities. Paper 3 reports findings from minority religious communities in Mainland China, with an emphasis on children’s judgments of impossible events brought about by supernatural figures. Finally, Paper 4 examines the influence of confirming and disconfirming consensus on Chinese and US children’s confidence that improbable and impossible outcomes are likely to occur. Taken together, this research has implications for our understanding of the role of social and cultural influences in children’s cognitive development across core domains of knowledge.

Sub Unit

• Social Cognition

Chairs

• Niamh McLoughlin, University of Kent

• Kirsten A. Lesage, Boston University

Individual Presentations

• Confidence in the existence of unobservable scientific and religious entities is transmitted via parent testimony - Presenting Author: Niamh McLoughlin, University of Kent; Non-Presenting Author: Yixin Kelly Cui, Boston University; Non-Presenting Author: Telli Davoodi, Boston University; Non-Presenting Author: Jennifer Marie Clegg, Texas State University; Non-Presenting Author: Fanxiao Wani Qiu, Boston University; Non-Presenting Author: Ayse Payir, Boston University; Non-Presenting Author: Paul Harris, Harvard University; Non-Presenting Author: Kathleen H. Corriveau, Boston University

• Strangers’ explicit belief statements do not influence children’s reality status judgments or beliefs about consensus - Presenting Author: Rebecca Dore, Ohio State University; Non-Presenting Author: Jenny Nissel, University of Texas at Austin; Non-Presenting Author: Jacqueline D Woolley, University of Texas at Austin; Non-Presenting Author: John G Hixon, University of Texas at Austin

• Understanding of possibility among secular and Christian children in China - Presenting Author: Yixin Kelly Cui, Boston University; Non-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

• The effect of consensus testimony on Chinese and U.S. children’s beliefs about possibility - Presenting Author: Jenny Nissel, University of Texas at Austin; Non-Presenting Author: Hui Li, Central China Normal University; Non-Presenting Author: Amanda Cramer, University of Texas at Austin; Non-Presenting Author: Jacqueline D Woolley, University of Texas at Austin