3 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
The Influence of Beliefs on Children's and Adults' Cognition and Social Preferences
Beliefs--mental representations of particular propositions as true--are fundamental to social cognition. Among the most influential beliefs are ideologies, which concern the way things should be and help people understand the social structures within which they live. Ideologies occupy a unique position because they contain elements of other types of beliefs. For example, to a Biblical literalist, the belief that the earth is 4000 years old may seem fact-like. Because not everyone agrees about ideologies, however, such beliefs may seem somewhat preference-like even to their strongest adherents. To investigate the role of social experience in reasoning about ideologies, we examined children and adults. Because children have significantly less experience with ideologies, their reasoning may diverge from adults. On the other hand, if children and adults respond similarly, this would indicate that vast amounts of experience are not necessary for adult-like belief-based cognition to emerge. Part 1 showed that 5-10 year old children and adults distinguished ideological beliefs from factual beliefs(a domain in which, if two people disagree, at least one must be wrong) and preference-based beliefs(a domain in which it is acceptable for people to disagree), indicating that much experience is unnecessary for this ability to emerge. Given that even young children recognize that those who disagree with their ideological beliefs are not necessarily wrong, it is possible that children would not show strong social preferences in this domain. On the other hand, given children’s propensity toward group-based preferences in other areas, even young children may show religion-based preferences. In Part II, 6-8 year old Christian children showed implicit pro-Christian preferences regardless of the comparison target’s religion but only reported pro-Christian preferences when the two targets were very different from one another. In Part III, 6-11 year old children preferred peers who shared their religious, factual, and preference-based beliefs and selectively attributed pro-social behaviors to individuals who shared their religious views. Taken together, these findings suggest that children and adults differentiate ideologies from other types of mental states and that, despite its complexity, ideology influences social judgments even among young children.Psycholog
Recommended from our members
Patterns of Implicit and Explicit Attitudes in Children and Adults: Tests in the Domain of Religion
Among the most replicated results in social cognition is the split between explicit and implicit attitudes; adults demonstrate weaker group-based preferences on explicit rather than implicit measures. However, the developmental origins of this pattern remain unclear. If implicit attitudes develop over a protracted period of time, children should not demonstrate the implicit preferences observed among adults. Additionally, unlike adults, children may report group-based preferences due to their lesser concern with social desirability. In Study 1, Christian adults showed the expected pattern of robust implicit preference but no explicit preference. In 4 additional experiments, 6- to 8-year-old children whose parents identified them as Christian viewed characters described as belonging to 2 starkly different religious groups (“strong religious difference”) or 2 relatively similar religious groups (“weak religious difference”). Participants then completed explicit and implicit (IAT) measures of attitude toward Christians and either Hindus (Study 2) or Jews (Studies 3–5). Three main results emerged. First, like adults, children showed significant implicit pro-Christian preferences across all studies. Second, unlike adults, children in the “strong religious difference” case reported preferences of approximately the same magnitude as their implicit attitudes (i.e., no dissociation). Third, even in the “weak religious difference” case, children showed implicit pro-Christian preferences (although, like adults, their explicit attitudes were not sensitive to intergroup difference). These data suggest that the seeds of implicit religious preferences are sown early and that children’s explicit preferences are influenced by the social distance between groups.Psycholog
Recommended from our members
The Development of Reasoning About Beliefs: Fact, Preference, and Ideology
The beliefs people hold about the social and physical world are central to self-definition and social interaction. The current research analyzes reasoning about three kinds of beliefs: those that concern matters of fact (e.g., dinosaurs are extinct), preference (e.g., green is the prettiest color), and ideology (e.g., there is only one God). The domain of ideology is of unique interest because it is hypothesized to contain elements of both facts and preferences. If adults' distinct reasoning about ideological beliefs is the result of prolonged experience with the physical and social world, children and adults should reveal distinct patterns of differentiating kinds of beliefs, and this difference should be particularly pronounced with respect to ideological beliefs. On the other hand, if adults' reasoning about beliefs is a basic component of social cognition, children and adults should demonstrate similar belief representations and patterns of belief differentiation. Two experiments demonstrate that 5–10 year old children and adults similarly judged religious beliefs to be intermediate between factual beliefs (where two disagreeing people cannot both be right) and preferences (where they can). From the age of 5 years and continuing into adulthood, individuals distinguished ideological beliefs from other types of mental states and demonstrated limited tolerance for belief-based disagreements.Psycholog