title: Vitalism in naive biological thinking.
abstract: Vitalism is the belief that internal bodily organs have agency and that they transmit or exchange a vital force or energy. Three experiments investigated the use of vitalistic explanations for biological phenomena by 5- and 10-year-old English-speaking children and adults, focusing on 2 components: the notion that bodily organs have intentions and the notion that some life force or energy is transmitted. The original Japanese finding of vitalistic thinking was replicated in Experiment 1 with English-speaking 5-year-olds. Experiment 2 indicated that the more active component of vitalism for these children is a belief in the transfer of energy during biological processes, and Experiment 3 suggested an additional, albeit lesser, role for organ intentionality. A belief in vital energy may serve a causal placeholder function within a naive theory of biology until a more precisely formulated mechanism is known.
authors.affiliation: U New South Wales.
authors.forename: Suzanne C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Morris
authors.forename: John E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Taplin
authors.forename: Susan A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Gelman
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation; D004735:Energy Transfer; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010827:Physiology; D013850:Thinking; D014799:Vitalism