Journal
JOURNAL OF COGNITION AND CULTURE
Volume 16, Issue 1-2, Pages 50-82Publisher
BRILL ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS
DOI: 10.1163/15685373-12342168
Keywords
Afterlife; P.R. China; context; naive biology; naive psychology; United States
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Funding
- US-China collaborative research grant - University of Michigan
- John Templeton Foundation
- Chinese Academy of Sciences [KJZD-EW-L04]
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Children and adults from the US (Study 1) and China (Study 2) heard about people who died in two types of narrative contexts - medical and religious - and judged whether their psychological and biological capacities cease or persist after death. Most 5- to 6-year-olds reported that all capacities would cease. In the US, but not China, there was an increase in persistence judgments at 7-8 years, which decreased there-after. US children's persistence judgments were influenced by narrative context - occurring more often for religious narratives - and such judgments were made especially for psychological capacities. When participants were simply asked what happens to people following death, in both countries there were age-graded increases in references to burial, religious ritual, and the supernatural.
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