Probabilistic Reasoning in Context: Socio-cultural Differences in Children's and Adults' Predictions about the Fulfillment of Prayers and Wishes
Probabilistic Reasoning in Context: Socio-cultural Differences in Children's and Adults' Predictions about the Fulfillment of Prayers and Wishes
复制标题
DOI：
10.1080/15248372.2019.1709468
复制
发表时间：
2020-01-10
影响因子：
2.1
通讯作者：
Lane, Jonathan D.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Lane, Jonathan D.
儿童和成人都明白，身体活动是个体欲望和实现欲望之间的典型渠道。然而，某些形式的祈求思想——例如，愿望和祈祷——被许多人认为可以影响外部世界，无需直接的身体行动就能满足欲望。我们研究了儿童和成人对期望事件发生的预测是否会基于以下因素而有所不同：(1)愿望表达的方式（许愿vs祈祷），(2)期望事件是否可信vs不可能，以及(3)参与者的宗教背景。研究人员给3到11岁的儿童（n = 144）和年轻人（n = 85）读了一个场景，在这个场景中，主人公要么许愿，要么祈祷所期望的事情发生。在普通的人为干预下，一些期望的事件似乎可以发生，而另一些事件即使有人为干预也不可能发生。学龄前儿童经常预测期望的事件会发生；随着年龄的增长，参与者认为获得的活动会越来越少。参与者的预测随期望事件发生的概率而变化——在整个年龄范围内，参与者预测不可能发生的事件比可能发生的事件发生的频率要低。因此，参与者的日常概率推理被引入到他们关于超自然请愿实现的推理中。儿童和成人的宗教经历预测了他们的判断，即如果他们祈祷，事情就会发生，而如果他们希望发生，事情就不会发生。因此，社会文化经验的影响并没有全面渗透到儿童和成人的概率推理中，而是特定于他们推理的特定背景。
Children and adults appreciate that physical action is typically the conduit between individuals' desires and the fulfillment of those desires. However, certain forms of petitionary thought - e.g., wishing and praying - are believed by many people to influence the external world and fulfill desires without direct physical action. We examine whether children's and adults' predictions about the occurrence of desired events differs based on: (1) the ways in which desires are expressed (wishing vs. praying), (2) whether desired events are plausible vs. impossible, and (3) participants' religious backgrounds. Children ages 3- to 11-years (n = 144) and young adults (n = 85) were read scenarios in which a protagonist either wished or prayed for a desired event to occur. Some of the desired events could plausibly happen with ordinary human intervention and others were impossible, even with human intervention. Preschoolers often predicted that desired events would obtain; with increasing age, participants judged that fewer events would obtain. Participants' predictions varied by the probability of the desired event - across the entire age-range participants predicted that impossible events would obtain less often than plausible events. Thus, participants' everyday probabilistic reasoning was imported into their reasoning about the fulfillment of supernatural petitions. Children's and adults' religious experiences predicted their judgments that events would obtain if they had been prayed for, but not if they had been wished for. Thus, the effects of socio-cultural experience did not globally pervade children's and adults' probabilistic reasoning, but were specific to certain contexts about which they reasoned.