I’ve got a feeling: Urban and rural indigenous children’s beliefs about early life mentality

Abstract

This cross-cultural investigation explored children's reasoning about their mental capacities during the earliest period of human physical existence--the prenatal period. For comparison, children's reasoning about the observable period of infancy was also examined. A total of 283 5- to 12-year-olds from two distinct cultures (urban Ecuador and rural indigenous Shuar) participated. Across cultures, children distinguished the fetal period from infancy, attributing fewer capacities to fetuses. However, for both the infancy and fetal periods, children from both cultures privileged the functioning of emotions and desires over epistemic states (i.e., abilities for thought and memory). Children's justifications to questions about fetal mentality revealed that although epistemic states were generally regarded as requiring physical maturation to function, emotions and desires were seen as functioning as a de facto result of prenatal existence and in response to the prospect of future birth and being part of a social group. These results show that from early in development, children across cultures possess nuanced beliefs about the presence and functioning of mental capacities. Findings converge with recent results to suggest that there is an early arising bias to view emotions and desires as the essential inviolable core of human mentality. The current findings have implications for understanding the role that emerging cognitive biases play in shaping conceptions of human mentality across different cultures. They also speak to the cognitive foundations of moral beliefs about fetal rights.

Do people think the soul is separate from the body and the mind?

“…Consistent with the finding that children and adults are more likely to view the soul than the mind as existing before a person is born (Richert & Harris, 2006, 2008, children in both settings claimed that emotions and desires existed pre-life and during the fetal period, but epistemic functions (e.g., to think) did not (Emmons & Kelemen, 2014). Additionally, children believed that emotional states and desires were not necessarily the product of physical maturation, unlike epistemic states (Emmons & Kelemen, 2015). Together with findings suggesting children and adults largely support the view that most psychological functions continue to exist after death (e.g., Bering, 2002;Richert & Harris, 2006, 2008, one developmental possibility is that the infants and children broadly essentialize by assuming humans (as well as animals and objects) have some kind of undefined, non-obvious element that imparts identity or category membership.…”

Balinese Hindus’ Afterlife Beliefs as Stable Constructs: An Effect of High Frequency Domestic Rituals

“…Further research should seek to explore the development of death concepts and afterlife beliefs in a wider array of cultural settings to further examine how various cultural factors interact with intuitive, early developing cognitive ideas (e.g., intuitive mind-body dualism). For instance, factors such as urbanization may play a role in the relative strength of biological versus religious conceptions of death as evidenced in other related reasoning domains (e.g., Emmons & Kelemen, 2015). Other cultural factors such as the emotional and social connection to one's ancestors could also be examined.…”