About this srcd poster session

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Panel information
Panel 20. Social Cognition

Abstract

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Children who are raised in religious homes develop an understanding of God as a non-human agent that is part of their lives. By the age of four years old, children start to perceive God as a supernatural entity that is real through social endorsement and testimony (Harris et. al, 2005; Richert & Corriveau, 2022). Prior research has found that children associate both negative and positive traits with God, and view God as different from other entities (Lee, Marin, et. al, 2023; Nyhof & Johnson, 2017). One factor related to children’s belief that an entity or event is real or not real is related to the emotional nature of that entity or event (Carrick & Ramirez, 2012). For example, children are more likely to believe an event is real if that event is positive. Research has yet to examine whether children’s views of God’s reality status is related to how positively or negatively they view God. This study examined the relationship between children’s God concepts and God’s reality status during early childhood.

Children (N = 242; 59.1% Female) from a diverse Southern Californian community between the ages of 3.31- to 6.98-years-old (M = 4.68, SD = .807) were interviewed and belonged to one of the following religious affiliations: Protestant (n = 30.3%), Catholic (n =18.7%), Muslim (n = 27%), non-Religious (n = 19.5%), or Other (n = 4.5%). Participants were asked how certain they were about God’s reality status (e.g., pretend or real) and that God demonstrates distinctive positive (e.g., loves them) and negative (e.g., scares them) attributes.

Children’s certainty that God is real was significantly negatively associated with certainty that God scares them (rs = -.291, p < .001). Meanwhile, God loving (rs = .246, p < .001), helping (rs = .234, p < .001), and comforting children when they are sad (rs = .203, p = .002) were significantly positively associated with children’s belief that God is real. Notably, children’s judgments of God’s reality status were unrelated to children’s beliefs that God gets angry with them or punishes them.

The results indicate that when young children believe God demonstrates conventionally positive attributes, they are also more likely to view God as a real figure, and the same applies inversely when viewing negative attributes.This indicates that God’s reality status is linked to children’s emerging concepts of God as an active agent in their everyday lives.

Author information

Author	Role
Elena Maria Guerrero Galaz, University of California, Riverside	Presenting author
Rebekah A. Richert, University of California, Riverside	Non-presenting author

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