About this session

Friday, 4:40 PM - 6:10 PM

Psychology of Religious Development: A Cross-cultural Analysis

Religion plays an important role in people’s lives. This international symposium brings together data from 16 countries and 6 religions to map the psychology of religious development from social and cognitive perspectives. Data were collected by a group of 50 researchers as part of the Developing Belief Network, an international collaborative consortium. Although results presented in these talks come from extensive interviews designed and implemented by the entirety of the network, each talk is unique, representing different subsets of the data, and focusing on diverse aspects of developing religious beliefs, religious identity, religious education, and parental influences.

Paper 1 investigates how children navigate religious diversity by categorizing themselves and others based on religious affiliation. Findings show that older children show a more nuanced understanding of religious ingroups and outgroups than younger children. Paper 2 focuses on Catholic and Protestant children in Northern Ireland, showing that, with age, children’s familiarity with supernatural agents (i.e. Jesus/God) increases in line with increasing religious beliefs. Paper 3 compares and contrasts children’s intuitive biological, psychological, and social knowledge about supernatural agents to their intuitive theories of human agents. Paper 4 explores children’s evaluations of norms across religious group boundaries. It highlights that with age, children’s evaluations of religious norms differ depending on the religious identity of the transgressor.

Together, these talks reveal important developmental changes in children’s understanding of religion and what it means to be a member of a religious group. The speakers will discuss the psychology of religious development from these multiple perspectives.

Paper #1
Title	The ontogeny of religious affiliation
Presenting author	Boli Reyes-Jaquez, Ph.D., University of New Hampshire, USA, United States

Paper #2
Title	Developing beliefs in religious agents: An analysis of children’s development across cultures, contexts, and religions
Presenting author	Megan Stutesman, Queen’s University Belfast, United States

Paper #3
Title	What is “super” about “supernatural” agents? Children’s perceptions of gods across cultural-religious settings
Presenting author	Kara Weisman, University of California, Riverside, US, United States

Paper #4
Title	Children’s application of religious, moral, and conventional norms across cultures
Presenting author	Dr. Meltem Yucel, Ph.D., Duke, United States

View all paper details

Session chairs
Dr. Meltem Yucel, Ph.D., Duke, United States; Tamar Kushnir, Ph.D., , United States

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