Representational coexistence in the God concept: Core knowledge intuitions of God as a person are not revised by Christian theology despite lifelong experience

Abstract

Previous research has shown that in the minds of young adult religious adherents, acquired theology about the extraordinary characteristics of God (e.g., omniscience) coexists with, rather than replaces, an initial concept of God formed by co-option of the person concept. We tested the hypothesis that representational coexistence holds even after extensive experience with Christian theology, as indexed by age. Christian religious adherents ranging in age from 18 to 87 years were asked to evaluate as true or false statements on which core knowledge intuitions about persons and Christian theology about God were consistent (both true or both false) or inconsistent (true on one and false on the other). Results showed, across adulthood, more theological errors in evaluating inconsistent versus consistent statements. Older adults also exhibited slower response times to inconsistent versus consistent statements. These findings show that despite extensive experience, indeed a lifetime of experience for some participants, the Christian theological God concept does not separate from the initial person concept from which it is formed. In fact, behavioral signatures of representational coexistence were not attenuated by experience. We discuss the broader implications of these findings to the acquisition of evolutionarily new concepts.

The Embodied God: Core Intuitions About Person Physicality Coexist and Interfere With Acquired Christian Beliefs About God, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus

“…2), we found support for the suggestion by M. Barlev and A. Shtulman (under review) that it is unintuitive to conceptualize God as disembodied: Christian religious adherents showed evidence of representational coexistence and interference (lower accuracy and slower RT) on statements where core knowledge intuitions about person physicality and acquired Christian theological doctrines about God's physicality (e.g., omnipresence and incorporeality) were inconsistent versus consistent. The same was also found for statements where core knowledge intuitions about person psychology and acquired Christian theological doctrines about God's psychology (e.g., infallibility) were inconsistent versus consistent (thereby replicating Barlev et al, , ).…”

“…Exp. 1 extended the RT effect documented in Barlev et al (2017Barlev et al ( , 2018 to MTurk workers. The effect size found was a bit greater than 0.40 (vs. the initially estimated d = 0.30).…”

“…A priori power analyses for this and all other experiments reported here were computed using G*Power 3.1 (Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, ). The RT effects in past experiments using the same sentence verification task (Barlev, Mermelstien, & German, , ) were significantly smaller than the accuracy effects, so the power analyses were computed on the basis of the RT effects. The expected RT effect sizes were in the range of d = 0.30–0.40.…”

“…At the crux of these contrasting hypotheses then is whether it is natural or not to represent persons or extraordinary beings such as the Christian God as disembodied. This study aims to explore this question using a task modified from Barlev, Mermelstein, and German (, ). Previously, Barlev et al tested the hypothesis that in the minds of adult Christian religious adherents, representations of God based on core person psychology coexist and interfere with acquired theology about God.…”

“…The representational interference or conflict on inconsistent items needs to be resolved, and it was predicted that failures to do so will yield more incorrect responses on inconsistent items as compared to consistent items; it was additionally predicted that this process will yield slower responding on inconsistent items (including on correct responses, i.e., when this representational conflict was successfully resolved). Barlev et al found behavioral evidence compatible with just such conflict: worse performance—lower accuracy and slower response time (RT)—on inconsistent versus consistent statements (Barlev et al, , ), including in Christian religious believers with a lifetime of religious adherence (Barlev et al, ).…”