Children Exposed To Religion Have Difficulty Distinguishing Fact From Fiction

[Jazzy]

Young children who are exposed to religion have a hard time differentiating between fact and fiction, according to a new study published in the July issue of Cognitive Science.

Researchers presented 5- and 6-year-old children from both public and parochial schools with three different types of stories -- religious, fantastical and realistic –- in an effort to gauge how well they could identify narratives with impossible elements as fictional.

The study found that, of the 66 participants, children who went to church or were enrolled in a parochial school were significantly less able than secular children to identify supernatural elements, such as talking animals, as fictional.

By relating seemingly impossible religious events achieved through divine intervention (e.g., Jesus transforming water into wine) to fictional narratives, religious children would more heavily rely on religion to justify their false categorizations.

“In both studies, [children exposed to religion] were less likely to judge the characters in the fantastical stories as pretend, and in line with this equivocation, they made more appeals to reality and fewer appeals to impossibility than did secular children,” the study concluded.

Refuting previous hypotheses claiming that children are “born believers,” the authors suggest that “religious teaching, especially exposure to miracle stories, leads children to a more generic receptivity toward the impossible, that is, a more wide-ranging acceptance that the impossible can happen in defiance of ordinary causal relations.”

Source

Comments on this study?

 

[Sinon]

I'm not really surprised. Religion tends to revolve around fictitious tales told as fact.

 

[DrLeftover]

From the study page:

Author Information
1 School of Education, Boston University
2 Division of Social Science, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
3 Graduate School of Education, Harvard University

Keywords: Religion; Fantasy; Impossibility; Testimony

Abstract

In two studies, 5- and 6-year-old children were questioned about the status of the protagonist embedded in three different types of stories. In realistic stories that only included ordinary events, all children, irrespective of family background and schooling, claimed that the protagonist was a real person. In religious stories that included ordinarily impossible events brought about by divine intervention, claims about the status of the protagonist varied sharply with exposure to religion. Children who went to church or were enrolled in a parochial school, or both, judged the protagonist in religious stories to be a real person, whereas secular children with no such exposure to religion judged the protagonist in religious stories to be fictional. Children's upbringing was also related to their judgment about the protagonist in fantastical stories that included ordinarily impossible events whether brought about by magic (Study 1) or without reference to magic (Study 2). Secular children were more likely than religious children to judge the protagonist in such fantastical stories to be fictional. The results suggest that exposure to religious ideas has a powerful impact on children's differentiation between reality and fiction, not just for religious stories but also for fantastical stories.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cogs.12138/abstract


It would seem to me that they proved exactly what they expected to prove.

But, I wonder where Santa Clause fits into this?

 

[Bluezone777]

You can throw in the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny in for good measure alongside Santa Claus of false stories told as truth that have nothing to do with religion. Why we even got this idea of purposefully misleading children as being good for them or at least harmless is beyond me.

 

[Damian]

I think this subject is more complicated than it seems. I mean, I totally agree with you guys but because being against religion and god in general is kind of a fashion nowdays I'm going to support the Church on this one. It's really easy to just explain why religion is wrong and god doesn't exist in a childish manner as most of the popular atheist youtubers do but it's not that simple. Religion and what's in the bible are not mean to be taken exactly literally (at least not for inteligent people). Most of these stuff have a deeper meaning so the problem is not actually them but they way parents, priests etc. understand these things and how they forward it to kids. I hope I explained my point well enough.

 

[Evil Eye]

I would be more interested in seeing how this affects their chances of getting a job, annual income, crimes committed, etc. as adults.
It's no big secret that kids can't distinguish fact from fiction and are pretty disposed to believing whatever you tell them...

For about the first 10 years of my life, I believed that the earth was only 2,000 years old.

Not ~5000 years?
(Y'know, so Jesus actually had a fairly old culture to convert.)

 

[McConnaughay]

For about the first 10 years of my life, I believed that the earth was only 2,000 years old.
No one in that church could ever adequately explain dinosaur fossils to me. I was told that people who have to bring up that argument are looking for reasons NOT to believe. Truly absurd.

---
I have no problem with religion. I have a problem with obliviousness, pigheadedness, bigotry, and disrespect. It just so happens that several religious figures tend to endorse that. I also believe you shouldn't shove religion down your child's throat. In-fact, my mom did it when I was younger, and for a while, I had very negative thoughts on religion as a result.

 

[DrLeftover]

I haven't looked it up for awhile, but according to, I believe it was Bishop Usher in the middle ages (I'm doing this from memory after several slugs of Evan Williams and a Miller High Life AFTER rewiring about half of our kitchen.... yeah, I do that too!) who worked it out from the "begots" and various "and he lived 175 years" in Genesis and so on that the world was created on the morning of October 23 in 4004 BC. (if my half pickled memory serves correctly)

THAT nonsense was accepted as THE TRUTH for an embarrassingly long period of time, and it was heresy to laugh at it.

And, in some corners, Namely the Westboro "god hates fags" Church and some others that fly various denominational / fundamentalist flags. AND, believe it or not, certain Islamic branches who, while dismissing the good Bishop that did the math as a fruitcake, have basically signed off on his date (give or take) and hold anybody that disagrees by more than a couple of years as Kafir "infidel/unbeliever".

Of course, the date is crap, and, to be nice about it, his math was somewhat shaky at best, it would seem that the good bishop had been at the same bottle I've been nipping at while he was doing his arithmetic.

In any case, the very idea that LIFE appeared on the nascent Earth almost as soon as the surface was cool enough for liquid water to appear takes almost as big a leap of faith as those that accepted his Nine AM time for the CREATION.

 

[aronmatt3]

Yes, I think this is the fact because I have seen many people around me debating this issue that my religion says this and how can I believe some one else about this.