The Role of Theory of Mind and Wishful Thinking in Children’s Moralizing Concepts of the Abrahamic God

Abstract

Robles, Simran Suresh, Aaliyah Triumph, and Haley Ward for assistance with data collection and coding; James Dunlea, Megan Goldring, and Ayse Payir for their feedback; and the Brooklyn Children's Museum, Traphagen Elementary School, and Crescent Elementary School for providing testing space. This project was made possible through the support of grant #61080 from the John Templeton Foundation to LH. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation. This work has also been supported (in part) by a Visiting Scholar award from the Russell Sage Foundation to LH. Any opinions expressed are those of the authors alone and should not be construed as representing the opinions of the Foundation.

The Cultural Evolution of Religion and Cooperation

“…In addition, cross-cultural individual-level studies have found evidence of baseline levels of moralization in people's reasoning about spirits and deities using both item response scales (Purzycki, 2013a; and free-listing (Bendixen et al, nd;Purzycki, 2011Purzycki, , 2016. These findings are corroborated by developmental research showing that young children in Western societies readily attribute moral knowledge to God (e.g., Heiphetz et al, 2016;Wolle et al, 2021).…”

Development of Religious Cognition

“…Additionally, Japanese 4-to 5-yearolds tend to claim that God has both experience (e.g., can feel things) and agency (e.g., can do things) (Moriguchi et al 2019). Regarding God's moral interests, 4-to 5-year-old children will say that God would have more knowledge of their own, rather than others', prosocial actions, but have more knowledge of others', rather than their own, transgressions (Wolle et al 2021).…”

Children’s and Adults’ Attribution of Moral Judgments to Human and Supernatural Agents

“…Preschoolers often view God's mind as similar to a human mind (e.g., attributing to God only knowledge that they themselves possess; Kiessling & Perner, 2014;Lane et al, 2010Lane et al, , 2012. By six years of age, many children around the world-including US and Spanish children from religious and secular backgrounds, Yukatek Mayan children, and Greek Orthodox children-typically distinguish God's mind from human minds, such as by reporting that God, but not a person, would know what was in a display that was hidden from view (Barrett et al, 2003;Gimenez-Dasi et al, 2005;Knight et al, 2004;Makris & Pnevmatikos, 2007;Wolle et al, 2021). However, this distinction may occur somewhat later in development when considering God's own moral beliefs, as opposed to God's knowledge of factual information.…”

“…Work in this area has focused on adults' God concepts (e.g., Johnson et al, 2013;McNamara et al, 2016;Norenzayan, 2013;Purzycki et al, 2012;Spilka et al, 1964), with a smaller number of developmental studies probing children's attributions of factual knowledge to God (e.g., Barrett et al, 2003;Kiessling & Perner, 2014;Knight et al, 2004). One prior study showed that 6-to 7-year-olds attribute greater moral knowledge to God than do 4-to 5-year-olds (Wolle et al, 2021) but did not ask how children expect God to respond to wrongdoing. In addition to extending basic scientific knowledge of God concepts, addressing this question can have translational implications.…”

“…In addition to extending basic scientific knowledge of God concepts, addressing this question can have translational implications. For instance, viewing God as punitive is associated with reduced propensity to cheat on an exam (Shariff & Norenzayan, 2011), and viewing God as knowledgeable of prosocial behaviors predicts generosity (Wolle et al, 2021). Thus, clarifying children's expectations around God's responses to morally relevant behaviors may highlight one possible factor underlying children's propensity to behave prosocially.…”