ABSTRACT

Two studies investigated children’s and their parents’ reasoning about their mental and bodily states during the time prior to biological conception–“preexistence.” Prior research has suggested that, in the absence of a religious script, children display untutored intuitions that they existed as largely disembodied emotional beings during preexistence. This research explored whether children who are being taught a formal theological doctrine about preexistence initially display similar default intuitive tendencies and whether these facilitate acquisition of the specific formal religious doctrine that they are learning. Adult (N = 38) and 7-to 12-year-old (N = 59) members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints judged whether their mental and bodily capacities functioned during preexistence. Results showed that by 11-to 12-years of age, children’s responses increasingly aligned with their parents’ doctrinally-accurate beliefs that they had a full range of mental states (i.e., epistemic, emotions, desires) and certain bodily capacities (i.e., perceptual, external body parts) during preexistence. However, at all ages, children deviated from their parents’ theologically-correct views, with children showing greatest consistency in privileging emotions as the continuous core of personhood. Findings converge with afterlife research to support conclusions that, across cultures, children are “intuitive eternalists” about psychological states. However, their intuitive tendencies also act as constraints on formal religious theory-building by primarily expediting the acquisition of those aspects of religious doctrine that are intuition-consistent not the doctrine as a whole. The process of becoming theologically correct therefore takes time and effort suggesting parallels to the process of acquiring formal scientific accuracy.

摘要

两项研究调查了儿童及其父母在生物受孕之前的时间——“先存”——对他们的心理和身体状态的推理。先前的研究表明，在没有宗教文字的情况下，儿童会表现出未经训练的直觉，即他们在前世期间主要是作为无实体的情感存在而存在的。这项研究探讨了接受关于先存的正式神学教义的儿童最初是否表现出类似的默认直觉倾向，以及这些是否有助于他们学习特定的正式宗教教义。耶稣基督后期圣徒教会的成人 (N = 38) 和 7 至 12 岁 (N = 59) 成员判断他们的心理和身体能力是否在前世期间发挥作用。结果显示，到 11 到 12 岁，儿童的反应越来越符合他们父母在教义上准确的信念，即他们在先存期间具有全方位的精神状态（即认知、情绪、欲望）和某些身体能力（即感知、外部身体部位）。然而，在所有年龄段，孩子们都偏离了父母在神学上正确的观点，孩子们在将情感作为人格的持续核心方面表现出最大的一致性。调查结果与来世研究相结合，以支持以下结论：跨文化，儿童是关于心理状态的“直觉永恒主义者”。然而，他们的直觉倾向也限制了正式的宗教理论构建，主要是加快获得那些与直觉一致而不是整个教义的宗教教义方面。