Does the Body Survive Death? Cultural Variation in Beliefs About Life Everlasting

Abstract

Mounting evidence suggests that endorsement of psychological continuity and the afterlife increases with age. This developmental change raises questions about the cognitive biases, social representations, and cultural input that may support afterlife beliefs. To what extent is there similarity versus diversity across cultures in how people reason about what happens after death? The objective of this study was to compare beliefs about the continuation of biological and psychological functions after death in Tanna, Vanuatu (a Melanesian archipelago), and the United States (Austin, Texas). Children, adolescents, and adults were primed with a story that contained either natural (non-theistic) or supernatural (theistic) cues. Participants were then asked whether or not different biological and psychological processes continue to function after death. We predicted that across cultures individuals would be more likely to endorse the continuation of psychological processes over biological processes (dualism) and that a theistic prime would increase continuation responses regarding both types of process. Results largely supported predictions; U.S. participants provided more continuation responses for psychological than biological processes following both the theistic and non-theistic primes. Participants in Vanuatu, however, provided more continuation responses for biological than psychological processes following the theistic prime. The data provide evidence for both cultural similarity and variability in afterlife beliefs and demonstrate that individuals use both natural and supernatural explanations to interpret the same events.

Embracing Death: Mexican Parent and Child Perspectives on Death

“…Astuti and Harris, (), Harris, (, ), and Harris and Giménez, () have argued that afterlife beliefs increase over late childhood and are more likely to be elicited when children are presented with a religious context compared to a non‐religious one. Similar results suggesting that a religious or supernatural context increases afterlife beliefs have been found in several countries including the United States (Lane, Zhu, Evans, & Wellman, ), Spain (Harris & Giménez, ), Madagascar (Astuti, ; Astuti & Harris, ), and Vanuatu (Busch, et al, ; Watson‐Jones, Busch, Harris, & Legare, ). In line with this research, another goal of the current study was to examine the impact of socialization and culture on the prevalence of coexistence beliefs about death in Mexico, a deeply religious country (Lipka, ).…”

“…These data suggest that for the majority of the children in our sample, a biological understanding coexisted with an alternative spiritual understanding that accepts that dead relatives can return, communicate with the living, and function both biologically and psychologically. Our work adds to a growing body of research suggesting that different ontological categories of belief, often thought to be contradictory, can coexist in the minds of young children Harris & Gim enez, 2005;Legare et al, 2012;Rosengren et al, 2014;Watson-Jones et al, 2017). Harris and Koenig (2006) have suggested that children might be likely to learn from testimony of others about concepts, such as death, that are not readily observable.…”

Children’s Emerging Understanding of Death

“…Although separating death into these subcomponents has been fruitful, it is limited in its treatment of death as a purely biological concept. This can be problematic because for many individuals and cultures, death is also understood through a religious or spiritual lens (Astuti, ; Gutiérrez et al, ; Watson‐Jones, Busch, Harris, & Legare, ). To examine these nonbiological aspects, some researchers have proposed a fifth subcomponent of death, noncorporeal continuity, which focuses on beliefs in the afterlife (Bering & Bjorklund, ; Bering, Blasi, & Bjorklund, ; Rosengren et al, ).…”

“…The idea that children actively construct knowledge from available information implies that culture plays a central role in children's emerging understanding of death. Numerous studies have shown cultural differences in how children conceptualize death (Astuti & Harris, 2008;Bering & Bjorklund, 2004;Guti errez et al, 2019;Lane, Zhu, Evans, & Wellman, 2016;Panagiotaki, Nobes, Ashraf, & Aubby, 2015;Watson-Jones et al, 2017). Acknowledging these cultural variations raises the arguably more interesting question of how culture influences children's conceptualizations of death.…”

Sorting Through, and Sorting Out, Anthropomorphism in CSR

“…Experimental studies conducted in CSR examining how the folk anthropomorphizes supernatural agents by representing them with human-like perceptual abilities have proven to be a mixed bag. Whereas participants are recorded regularly attributing visual and auditory perception to supernatural agents, olfactory, tactile, and gustatory senses are far less frequently attributed to them (Bek & Lock, 2011;Bering, 2002;Bering, Blasi, & Bjorklund, 2005;Nyhof & Johnson, 2017;Shtulman, 2008;Shtulman & Lindeman, 2016;Watson-Jones, Busch, Harris, & Legare, 2017) save when the participants are imagining themselves as surviving their own deaths in an afterlife (Pereira, Faísca, & Sá-Saraiva, 2012). This may, however, be an artifact of how the perceptual questions are asked (Hodge, 2012;Lane, Liqi, Evans, & Wellman, 2016).…”