Wondering how: Children’s and adults’ explanations for mundane, improbable, and extraordinary events

Abstract

Children aged 5 through 9 years and adults judged the reality status of parallel mundane, improbable, and extraordinary events, generated an explanation for each event, and evaluated explanations purportedly generated by other participants. Participants of all ages claimed that mundane and improbable events could happen, whereas extraordinary events could not. Participants also overwhelmingly generated natural explanations for all three types of events but did so most for mundane, less for improbable, and least for extraordinary events. Supernatural explanations followed the reverse pattern, indicating that an event's possibility affects explanation. Participants also evaluated natural explanations most favorably and evaluated claims that there was no explanation for an event least favorably across all story types. However, significant rejection of the Bno explanation^claim did not emerge until age 8 years, indicating that age affects acceptance of the idea that some events might be unexplainable.

Children’s ideas about what can really happen: The impact of age and religious background

“…For the small number of instances where children judged these stories as 'real', they did not refer to the target cause, and in that sense, did not affirm it as a possible cause. These findings are line with the decades of evidence showing that children rarely invoke supernatural forces as a causal explanation even when faced with unusual or unexpected events (Cornelius, Lacy, & Woolley, 201;Huang, 1930Huang, , 1943Mead;1932;authors, under review) and typically deny the possibility of magical outcomes in real life (Nancekivell & Friedman, 2017;Orozco-Giraldo & Harris, 2019;Subbotsky, 1994Subbotsky, , 2010Woolley & Cornelius, 2017;Woolley & Cox, 2007). Moreover, tempering the earlier conclusions of Corriveau and collegues (Corriveau et al, 2015), we did not find any evidence that exposure to religious testimony renders children more credulous towards the impossible events embedded in magical stories.…”

Can God do the impossible? Anthropomorphism and children’s certainty that God can make impossible things possible

“…Even when Nancekivell and Friedman (2017) included a magical being (e.g., a fairy or wizard) in the story, children still provided natural explanations for the phenomena. Woolley and Cornelius (2017) further found that children's belief about the possibility of supernatural events was related to their explanations for those events. Although 5-to 9-year-olds were most likely to give natural explanations for how three kinds of events could have happened [mundane (i.e., a boy bumps a vase and returns it to the shelf and the mom doesn't notice), improbable (i.e., the vase breaks, the boy fixes it and the mom doesn't notice), or extraordinary (i.e., the vase breaks and is fixed when the boy looks up from hiding behind the couch)], when children claimed the extraordinary event was possible, they also were more likely to give a supernatural explanation (e.g., God or magic) for that event.…”

Beliefs About the Persistence of History in Objects and Spaces in the United States and India

“…To examine the ontological status of people’s beliefs, participants’ explanations were classified using a coding scheme that was adapted from Woolley and Cornelius (2017). Explanations were coded as natural when the participant alluded to physical, biological, chemical, or psychological processes (e.g., “People can detect pheromones and react emotionally based off of them.” [T-shirt—joy]; “Religious water doesn’t have any medical healing powers so it would be the placebo effect.” [anointed water]).…”