How Do Children Develop Religious Beliefs?
BU’s Kathleen Corriveau says research into how families pass on religious beliefs focuses too heavily on Christians in wealthy nations, something she’s working to redress. Photo by Chris McIntosh
How Do Children Develop Religious Beliefs?
BU researcher will study how families around the world and from different religions teach children about religious practices, stereotypes, and natural vs. supernatural entities
If you’re a religious person who has been a subject in theology research, don’t take this personally. Kathleen Corriveau says you’re too WEIRD. But that’s not a dig at the devout. WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) is the demographic description of the subjects who dominate studies of religious cognition, says Corriveau, a Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development professor of applied human development.
Most religious studies are rife with Christians, she says, despite that they only make up less than a third of the world’s total population. This leaves a gaping hole in our understanding of how the majority of children in religious families around the world learn their beliefs and practices: stereotypes they hold about their own and other religious groups, how such stereotypes influence their interactions with people, and how they juggle their understanding of the supernatural with what they learn about science.
A set of global questions like this takes a global solution, and Corriveau is spearheading an ambitious one. She and Rebekah Richert of the University of California, Riverside, have received the second-largest grant ever from the John Templeton Foundation—$10 million over five years—to build a worldwide network of scholars to study how religious beliefs are transmitted from generation to generation.
Their study, called the Developing Belief Network, is not the first such world-spanning collaboration in religious psychology research. “But we believe ours may be the first that truly allows for the study of diverse cultures using behavioral measures,” says Corriveau, who spoke with The Brink about the project.
Q&A
With Kathleen Corriveau
The Brink: Why is this research important?
Kathleen Corriveau: In psychology, there is a long history of making global inferences from samples of convenience. One recent paper reviewing developmental psychology studies found that less than 3 percent of participants came from South America, Africa, and Asia—which contain almost 85 percent of the world population. So our hope is to include scholars in the network and participants in our fieldsites that will allow us to explore what is culturally unique about belief formation and what is more universal. We think that by understanding the diversity of how young children are growing up, that will help to elucidate all of the common experiences that unite rather than divide us.
The Brink: Why study children and religious beliefs?
Kathleen Corriveau: Many concepts in religion cannot be observed through firsthand observation. The same is true in science; just look at how we’ve modified our behavior based on a virus none of us can see without a microscope. So we’re very interested in how religious concepts are discussed with children.
Given that we are hoping to capture diversity in belief formation across a variety of cultures, it is very likely that we will include participants who might identify as atheist or humanist.
The Brink: Are there particular faith traditions that you hope to include in the network’s research?
Kathleen Corriveau: Yes, the vast majority of research exploring the development of religious cognition has focused on Judeo-Christian beliefs, and too often does not include other religions. So we are hoping to include participants from a diverse sample, including monotheistic and pantheistic religions, as well as other cultures with a variety of supernatural and spiritual beliefs. Definitely Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, but then also indigenous communities with a variety of spiritual practices, such as the Shuar in Peru or the Maya in Mexico.
The Brink: What methodologies will the studies use?
Kathleen Corriveau: Our grant timeline is structured such that the first year is set aside to have conversations across the network of researchers to decide on a shared methodology. For that reason, we don’t have a set design yet. In general, we’re hoping to include measures that have been shown to be important in social cognitive development, such as children’s developing understanding of mental states (for humans, as well as supernatural entities) and children’s developing executive functioning abilities.
We’re also imagining we will have some controlled experiments and some natural language samples to explore subtle differences in the language around how natural and supernatural entities are discussed. For example, adults often include what are called “modulations of assertion” when talking about supernatural entities, like saying, “I believe in God,” but these are rarely included when talking about natural entities, like saying, “I believe in germs.”
Adapted for The Brink from an article originally published in Wheelock Magazine.
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