Judgments About Fact and Fiction by Children From Religious and Nonreligious Backgrounds

Abstract

In two studies, 5-and 6-year-old children were questioned about the status of the protagonist embedded in three different types of stories. In realistic stories that only included ordinary events, all children, irrespective of family background and schooling, claimed that the protagonist was a real person. In religious stories that included ordinarily impossible events brought about by divine intervention, claims about the status of the protagonist varied sharply with exposure to religion. Children who went to church or were enrolled in a parochial school, or both, judged the protagonist in religious stories to be a real person, whereas secular children with no such exposure to religion judged the protagonist in religious stories to be fictional. Children's upbringing was also related to their judgment about the protagonist in fantastical stories that included ordinarily impossible events whether brought about by magic (Study 1) or without reference to magic (Study 2). Secular children were more likely than religious children to judge the protagonist in such fantastical stories to be fictional. The results suggest that exposure to religious ideas has a powerful impact on children's differentiation between reality and fiction, not just for religious stories but also for fantastical stories.

Can that really happen? Children’s knowledge about the reality status of fantastical events in television

“…Regardless of whether described characters and events were actually possible or not, preschoolers judged events that were embedded in realistic stories as more likely to happen in real life than events embedded in fantastical stories. Corriveau, Chen, and Harris (2014) also examined the effect of realistic stories, religious stories, and fantastical stories on 5-and 6-year-olds' judgments of the reality status of the protagonist. They found that children were able to use realistic contexts to conclude that a character was real but differed on how they judged the protagonist in the religious and fantastical stories according to the children's exposure to religion; specifically, children with a religious upbringing were more likely to claim that religious events were real.…”

Early Testimonial Learning

“…That is, they were likely to judge improbable events as impossible and did not show adult-like response patterns until age 8. In recent work by Corriveau, Chen, and Harris (2014), 5-and 6-year-old children were asked to make judgments about the reality status of protagonists in realistic, religious, and fantastical stories. Children from secular backgrounds were more likely than those from religious backgrounds to deny that the protagonist in religious stories was a real person.…”

“…elicit less rejection and an interest in the kind of access that the speaker had when making the claim (Brosseau-Liard & Birch, 2011). Further, claims that are not internally inconsistent but that violate aspects of the child's experience and knowledge of the physical world (e.g., miraculous or impossible claims) invite different interpretations depending on the child's prior experience (Corriveau et al, 2014). While more work is needed, research investigating different types of "message conflicts" suggests that children are interested in the kind of backing or support that a claim receives and also, that what backing suffices depends upon the claim it is to meant to support.…”

Confronting, Representing, and Believing Counterintuitive Concepts: Navigating the Natural and the Supernatural

“…For example, after hearing stories about familiar biblical miracles (e.g., the parting of the Red Sea), religiously-raised 4- to 6-year-olds often judged that the protagonists were real people (Vaden & Woolley, 2011). By contrast, children with no exposure to religion via church attendance or school dismissed the protagonists as make believe and cited the impossibility of the miracle to justify their assessment (Corriveau, Chen, & Harris, in press). …”