Correspondence Between Parents’ and Children’s Scientific and Religious Concepts

The enculturation of abstract concepts involves the interaction between attributes of the child (e.g., age, reasoning heuristics) with factors that are extrinsic, such as the cultural context. The present study examined the degree to which parents and children correspond in their concepts of a religious entity (i.e., God) and a scientific entity (i.e., germs). The influence of parent context on correspondence of concepts of God and germs was also examined by measuring the predictive power of (a) characteristics intrinsic to the parent (e.g., parent’s beliefs and values) and (b) the social learning situations created by parents (e.g., engagement of children in behaviors and discourse related to the entities). Participants included 123 parent-child dyads diverse in ethnic and religious background. Children were between 5-and-8.9 years of age. The following central findings emerged: First, parents and children separately conceptualized the psychological and physiological properties of God and germs in ways consistent with prior research. Second, correspondence between parents and children was lowest for God’s physiological properties (i.e., children thought God had physiological properties and parents did not) and highest for germs’ psychological properties (i.e., both parents and children conceptualized germs as lacking psychological properties). Third, parent context factors were most influential for correspondence of God’s psychological properties. These results suggest that children’s intuitive reasoning about agents during the early-to-middle childhood period of development may impact the influence of parents on abstract concept development; and that parent contexts are more influential for the correspondence of religious, as opposed to scientific concepts

Correspondence Between Parents’ and Children’s Scientific and Religious Concepts

The enculturation of abstract concepts involves the interaction between attributes of the child (e.g., age, reasoning heuristics) with factors that are extrinsic, such as the cultural context. The present study examined the degree to which parents and children correspond in their concepts of a religious entity (i.e., God) and a scientific entity (i.e., germs). The influence of parent context on correspondence of concepts of God and germs was also examined by measuring the predictive power of (a) characteristics intrinsic to the parent (e.g., parent’s beliefs and values) and (b) the social learning situations created by parents (e.g., engagement of children in behaviors and discourse related to the entities). Participants included 123 parent-child dyads diverse in ethnic and religious background. Children were between 5-and-8.9 years of age. The following central findings emerged: First, parents and children separately conceptualized the psychological and physiological properties of God and germs in ways consistent with prior research. Second, correspondence between parents and children was lowest for God’s physiological properties (i.e., children thought God had physiological properties and parents did not) and highest for germs’ psychological properties (i.e., both parents and children conceptualized germs as lacking psychological properties). Third, parent context factors were most influential for correspondence of God’s psychological properties. These results suggest that children’s intuitive reasoning about agents during the early-to-middle childhood period of development may impact the influence of parents on abstract concept development; and that parent contexts are more influential for the correspondence of religious, as opposed to scientific concepts

Replication of JI Campbell, ND Robert (2008, JEPLMC 34(3), Exp 3)

This is an independent replication as part of the Reproducibility Project: Psychology

Correspondence in parents' and children's concepts of god: Investigating the role of parental values, religious practices and executive functioning.

This study examined the extent to which children's concepts of God correspond with their parents' concepts of God. It also examined how parent-context factors and children's executive functioning relate to parent-child conceptual similarity. Parent-child dyads from varied religious and racial backgrounds participated. Dyads had the greatest conceptual similarity concerning God's mind-dependent functions. Though correspondence between parents and children was lowest concerning God's body-dependent functions, dyads were more similar about those functions when parents engaged in more frequent religious practices with their child and thought God was important. Children's concepts of God were unrelated to religious practices, and parent-child conceptual similarity was unrelated to children's age and executive functioning. Simply put, variation among parents' anthropomorphic concepts of God drove variation in parent-child conceptual similarity. Overall, these findings suggest that embodied concepts of God may be most sensitive to cultural input and that socialization practices provide greater insight into parents' anthropomorphic concepts

Concept of a Deity: Structure and Properties

Individuals attribute more psychological (e.g., forget) than biological (e.g., eat) or physical (e.g., be touched) prop-erties to supernatural beings (Shtulman, 2008). It is unclear how those domains each contribute to an overall conception of asupernatural being (e.g., God). Undergraduate students (N = 341) responded to nine questions representing the three domainsor factors (psychological, biological, and physical), composing an overall measure of God’s anthropomorphic properties.A confirmatory factor analysis was performed to assess the structure of undergraduates’ anthropomorphic concept of God. Fitindices suggest acceptable model fit, χ2(24) = 73.09, p < .001, CFI = 0.952, SRMR = .051. All loadings were significant. Bi-ological (0.99; 0.01) and physical (0.90; 0.19) factors loaded more strongly onto anthropomorphism, and had smaller variances,than the psychological (0.67; 0.56) factor. These findings suggest there are varied ways of conceptualizing the psychological(versus non-psychological) properties of God; thus, non-psychological properties are more predictive in God concepts

Dimensional Structure of and Variation in Anthropomorphic Concepts of God

When considering other persons, the human mind draws from folk theories of biology, physics, and psychology. Studies have examined the extent to which people utilize these folk theories in inferring whether or not God has human-like biological, physical, and psychological constraints. However, few studies have examined the way in which these folk attributions relate to each other, the extent to which attributions within a domain are consistent, or whether cultural factors influence human-like attributions within and across domains. The present study assessed 341 individuals’ attributions of anthropomorphic properties to God in three domains (psychological, biological, and physical), their religious beliefs, and their engagement in religious practices. Three Confirmatory Factor Analyses tested hypothetical models of the underlying structure of an anthropomorphic concept of God. The best fitting model was the “Hierarchical Dimensions Concept,” the analyses indicated one overall dimension of anthropomorphism with three sub-domains. Additionally, participants’ religiosity was negatively related to attributing human-like psychological properties to God, suggesting that the more people engage with their religion, the less they think about God as having a ‘human-like’ mind. Religiosity was positively related to individual consistency scores in the biological domain. In other words, greater religiosity was related to less consistent answers about God’s biological properties. As a result, the findings of the current study also suggest that individuals do not just vary between each other in how much they anthropomorphize God, but additionally, variation exists in the type of anthropomorphic reasoning used within an individual person’s concept of God

Reproducibility Project: Psychology

Reproducibility is a defining feature of science, but the extent to which it characterizes current research is unknown. We conducted replications of 100 experimental and correlational studies published in three psychology journals using high-powered designs and original materials when available

Data from: Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science

This record contains the underlying research data for the publication "Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science" and the full-text is available from: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/5257Reproducibility is a defining feature of science, but the extent to which it characterizes current research is unknown. We conducted replications of 100 experimental and correlational studies published in three psychology journals using high-powered designs and original materials when available. Replication effects were half the magnitude of original effects, representing a substantial decline. Ninety-seven percent of original studies had statistically significant results. Thirty-six percent of replications had statistically significant results; 47% of original effect sizes were in the 95% confidence interval of the replication effect size; 39% of effects were subjectively rated to have replicated the original result; and if no bias in original results is assumed, combining original and replication results left 68% with statistically significant effects. Correlational tests suggest that replication success was better predicted by the strength of original evidence than by characteristics of the original and replication teams