title: Cultural context shapes essentialist beliefs about religion.
abstract: The present study investigates the processes by which essentialist beliefs about religious categories develop. Children (ages 5 and 10) and adults (n = 350) from 2 religious groups (Jewish and Christian), with a range of levels of religiosity, completed switched-at-birth tasks in which they were told that a baby had been born to parents of 1 religion but raised by parents of another religion. Results indicated that younger children saw religion-based categories as possible essential kinds, regardless of the child's own religious background, but that culture-specific patterns emerged across development. This work shows that cultural context plays a powerful role in guiding the development of essentialist beliefs about religious categories. (PsycINFO Database Record
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Yale University.
authors.forename: Lisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Chalik
authors.affiliation: Department of Philosophy, Princeton University.
authors.forename: Sarah-Jane
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Leslie
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, New York University.
authors.forename: Marjorie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rhodes
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D002666:Psychology, Child; D012069:Religion and Psychology; D012919:Social Behavior