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God–Mother–Baby: What Children Think They Know
Author(s) -
Kiessling Florian,
Perner Josef
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/cdev.12210
Subject(s) - egocentrism , psychology , ignorance , task (project management) , developmental psychology , social psychology , theory of mind , cognition , epistemology , economics , philosophy , management , neuroscience
This study tested one hundred and nine 3‐ to 6‐year‐old children on a knowledge‐ignorance task about knowledge in humans (mother, baby) and God. In their responses, participants not reliably grasping that seeing leads to knowing in humans (pre‐representational) were significantly influenced by own knowledge and marginally by question format. Moreover, knowledge was attributed significantly more often to mother than baby and explained by agent‐based characteristics. Of participants mastering the task for humans (representational), God was largely conceived as ignorant “man in the sky” by younger and increasingly as “supernatural agent in the sky” by older children. Evidence for egocentrism and for anthropomorphizing God lends support to an anthropomorphism hypothesis. First‐time evidence for an agent‐based conception of others' knowledge in pre‐representational children is presented.