Beliefs about Origins and Eternal Life: How Easy Is Formal Religious Theory Development?

Autor/inn/en	Kelemen, Deborah; Emmons, Natalie; Brown, Sarah A.; Gallik, Connor
Titel	Beliefs about Origins and Eternal Life: How Easy Is Formal Religious Theory Development?
Quelle	In: Journal of Cognition and Development, 22 (2021) 3, S.356-378 (23 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Brown, Sarah A.)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1524-8372
DOI	10.1080/15248372.2021.1909031
Schlagwörter	Religion; Religious Factors; Parent Child Relationship; Christianity; Cognitive Processes; Human Body; Religious Education; Correlation; Churches; Parent Attitudes; Childrens Attitudes; Age Differences; Intuition; Accuracy; Biology; Psychological Patterns; Surveys; Florida + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Parents-child relationship; Parent-child-relation; Parent-child relationship; Eltern-Kind-Beziehung; Christentum; Cognitive process; Kognitiver Prozess; Menschlicher Körper; Kirchliche Erziehung; Religionserziehung; Religionspädagogik; Korrelation; Church; Kirche; Elternverhalten; Age; Difference; Age difference; Altersunterschied; Biologie; Survey; Umfrage; Befragung
Abstract	Two studies investigated children's and their parents' reasoning about their mental and bodily states during the time prior to biological conception--"preexistence." Prior research has suggested that, in the absence of a religious script, children display untutored intuitions that they existed as largely disembodied emotional beings during preexistence. This research explored whether children who are being taught a formal theological doctrine about preexistence initially display similar default intuitive tendencies and whether these facilitate acquisition of the specific formal religious doctrine that they are learning. Adult (N = 38) and 7-to 12-year-old (N = 59) members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints judged whether their mental and bodily capacities functioned during preexistence. Results showed that by 11-to 12-years of age, children's responses increasingly aligned with their parents' doctrinally-accurate beliefs that they had a full range of mental states (i.e., epistemic, emotions, desires) and certain bodily capacities (i.e., perceptual, external body parts) during preexistence. However, at all ages, children deviated from their parents' theologically-correct views, with children showing greatest consistency in privileging emotions as the continuous core of personhood. Findings converge with afterlife research to support conclusions that, across cultures, children are "intuitive eternalists" about psychological states. However, their intuitive tendencies also act as constraints on formal religious theory-building by primarily expediting the acquisition of those aspects of religious doctrine that are intuition-consistent not the doctrine as a whole. The process of becoming theologically correct therefore takes time and effort suggesting parallels to the process of acquiring formal scientific accuracy. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01