The development and diversity of religious cognition and behavior: Protocol for Wave 1 data collection with children and parents by the Developing Belief Network.

The Developing Belief Network is a consortium of researchers studying human development in diverse social-cultural settings, with a focus on the interplay between general cognitive development and culturally specific processes of socialization and cultural transmission in early and middle childhood. The current manuscript describes the study protocol for the network's first wave of data collection, which aims to explore the development and diversity of religious cognition and behavior. This work is guided by three key research questions: (1) How do children represent and reason about religious and supernatural agents? (2) How do children represent and reason about religion as an aspect of social identity? (3) How are religious and supernatural beliefs transmitted within and between generations? The protocol is designed to address these questions via a set of nine tasks for children between the ages of 4 and 10 years, a comprehensive survey completed by their parents/caregivers, and a task designed to elicit conversations between children and caregivers. This study is being conducted in 39 distinct cultural-religious groups (to date), spanning 17 countries and 13 languages. In this manuscript, we provide detailed descriptions of all elements of this study protocol, give a brief overview of the ways in which this protocol has been adapted for use in diverse religious communities, and present the final, English-language study materials for 6 of the 39 cultural-religious groups who are currently being recruited for this study: Protestant Americans, Catholic Americans, American members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jewish Americans, Muslim Americans, and religiously unaffiliated Americans.

Belief, culture, & development: Insights from studying the development of religious beliefs and behaviors.

We describe the theoretical and methodological contributions of a cultural and developmental approach to the study of religious belief and behavior. We focus on how the study of religious development can provide a foothold into answering some key questions in developmental science: What is belief? What is culture? What is the nature of human development? Throughout the chapter, we provide examples of methodological innovations that have emerged over the course of the first year of a global, collaborative research project into the development of religious beliefs and behaviors.

The role of religious context in children's differentiation between God's mind and human minds.

The current study examined the cultural factors (i.e., religious background, religious participation, parents' views of prayer, and parents' concepts of God) that contribute to children's differentiation between the capabilities of human minds and God's mind. Protestant Christian, Roman Catholic, Muslim, and Religiously Non-Affiliated parents and their preschool-aged children were interviewed (N = 272). Children of Muslim parents differentiated the most between God's mind and human minds (i.e., human minds are fallible but God's is not), and children who had greater differentiation between God's and humans' minds had parents who had the least anthropomorphic conceptions of God. Additionally, there was a unique effect of being raised in a Religiously Non-Affiliated home on the degree of children's differentiation between God's and human minds after religious context factors had been accounted for; in other words, children of Religious Non-Affiliates differentiated between humans and God the least and their differentiation was unrelated to religious context factors. These findings delineate the ways in which religious context differences influence concepts of God from the earliest formation. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Children's concept of God develops during the preschool years. The degree of anthropomorphism in children's concept of God varies. What does this study add? Muslim children have a strong differentiation between what God's mind and human minds can do. Religiously Non-Affiliated children have almost no differentiation between God's and human minds. Parent anthropomorphism explains variance in children's God concepts, both within and across religious groups.