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Religious Polarization and Justification of Belief in Invisible Scientific versus Religious Entities

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Title: Religious Polarization and Justification of Belief in Invisible Scientific versus Religious Entities
Language: English
Authors: Ayse Payir (ORCID 0000-0003-1210-2082), Gaye Soley (ORCID 0000-0002-6333-6017), Oya Serbest, Kathleen H. Corriveau, Paul L. Harris (ORCID 0000-0003-4907-0539)
Source: Child Development. 2024 95(5):1723-1738.
Availability: Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 16
Publication Date: 2024
Document Type: Journal Articles
Reports - Research
Descriptors: Religious Factors, Conflict, Beliefs, Psychological Patterns, Barriers, Visual Environment, Confidence Testing, Children, Role of Religion, Scientific Concepts, Foreign Countries, Parents
Geographic Terms: Turkey
DOI: 10.1111/cdev.14118
ISSN: 0009-3920
1467-8624
Abstract: Children and adults express greater confidence in the existence of invisible scientific as compared to invisible religious entities. To further examine this differential confidence, 5- to 11-year-old Turkish children and their parents (N = 174, 122 females) from various regions in Türkiye, a country with an ongoing tension between secularism and religion, were tested in 2021 for their belief in invisible entities. Participants expressed more confidence in the existence of scientific than religious entities. For scientific entities, children justified their belief primarily by elaborating on the properties of the entity, rather than referring to the testimonial source of their judgment. This pattern was reversed for religious entities, arguably, highlighting the role of polarization in shaping the testimony children typically hear.
Abstractor: As Provided
Notes: https://osf.io/sem3a
Entry Date: 2024
Accession Number: EJ1449411
Database: ERIC
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  Value: <anid>AN0180986883;cdv01sep.24;2024Nov22.02:17;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0180986883-1">Religious polarization and justification of belief in invisible scientific versus religious entities </title> <p>Children and adults express greater confidence in the existence of invisible scientific as compared to invisible religious entities. To further examine this differential confidence, 5‐ to 11‐year‐old Turkish children and their parents (N = 174, 122 females) from various regions in Türkiye, a country with an ongoing tension between secularism and religion, were tested in 2021 for their belief in invisible entities. Participants expressed more confidence in the existence of scientific than religious entities. For scientific entities, children justified their belief primarily by elaborating on the properties of the entity, rather than referring to the testimonial source of their judgment. This pattern was reversed for religious entities, arguably, highlighting the role of polarization in shaping the testimony children typically hear.</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> Abbreviations</item> <p></p> <item> CI confidence interval</item> <p></p> <item> OR odds ratio</item> <p></p> <item> SES socioeconomic status</item> </ulist> <p>In many areas of knowledge, especially where firsthand observation is limited or impossible, adults rely on the information provided by others (Harris, [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref1">13</reflink>]; Harris et al., [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref2">17</reflink>]; Harris & Koenig, [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref3">16</reflink>]). The COVID‐19 pandemic serves as a good example: Many people around the world depended on the testimony provided by others, especially medical experts, regarding symptoms, prevention, and vaccine effectiveness. Despite our wide‐ranging dependence on others' testimony, mainstream developmental psychology has largely ignored how children learn from this source until recently (Harris, [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref4">13</reflink>]).</p> <p>In the last two decades, however, there has been a steady growth in research investigating children's learning via testimony, especially about invisible scientific and religious phenomena (e.g., Canfield & Ganea, [<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref5">5</reflink>]; Harris et al., [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref6">18</reflink>]; Harris & Corriveau, [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref7">15</reflink>]). This line of research, which initially focused on the beliefs of Western children and adults but has subsequently been extended to various cultural groups, has consistently indicated higher confidence in the existence of various scientific as compared to religious phenomena. To further probe this finding, we examined the level of confidence in the existence of such phenomena in Türkiye, a constitutionally secular, Muslim‐majority country with an "unsettled relationship between secularism and religion" (Keyman, [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref8">21</reflink>]). Below, we first review the pattern of belief in scientific and religious phenomena, as well as the pattern of justification for such beliefs, in various cultures, before turning to the history of secularization in Türkiye and the description of the current study.</p> <hd id="AN0180986883-2">Belief in scientific and religious phenomena</hd> <p>Harris et al. ([<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref9">18</reflink>]) interviewed 5‐ to 6‐year‐old English and U.S. children about three types of invisible entities that differ in the degree of community endorsement: scientific entities, such as germs and oxygen, whose existence is widely presupposed in everyday discourse, supernatural agents such as God and the Tooth Fairy that are widely endorsed by adults when conversing with young children, and special beings such as ghosts and monsters that are not typically endorsed by adults when conversing with young children. Children proved confident about the existence of both the scientific entities and the endorsed supernatural agents, but dubious about the existence of unendorsed special beings. Nevertheless, children expressed greater confidence in the existence of scientific entities, as compared to the endorsed supernatural agents.</p> <p>Subsequent studies provided further evidence for this differential confidence. For example, when interviewed about their belief in scientific entities such as germs and oxygen, as well as supernatural entities endorsed in their immediate community such as <emph>ijk'al</emph> (cave spirits that rise at night) and <emph>ch'ulelal</emph> (the spirits of the deceased), 6‐ to 13‐year‐old Mayan children from Mexico were more confident about the existence of the scientific entities as compared to the endorsed beings (Harris et al., [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref10">14</reflink>]). Similarly, 10‐ to 12‐year‐old Spanish children attending a Catholic school expressed more confidence in scientific entities (e.g., germs and oxygen) than in supernatural phenomena (e.g., God and the soul) (Guerrero et al., [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref11">11</reflink>]).</p> <p>What explains the early emergence of such differential confidence? One possibility is that the testimony that children hear about these entities varies in subtle but meaningful ways. For example, children may hear adults talking about the existence of scientific entities confidently and matter‐of‐factly whereas they may hear them express uncertainty when talking about religious entities. Children might use these subtle variations in testimony to assess the community consensus surrounding these entities and adjust their own level of confidence accordingly (Harris & Corriveau, [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref12">15</reflink>]). Indeed, recent studies focusing on naturalistic parent–child conversations provide compelling evidence for such a mechanism.</p> <p>For example, in one study, Canfield and Ganea ([<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref13">5</reflink>]) examined if U.S. parents talk to their children differently about scientific (e.g., germs, electricity) as compared to endorsed supernatural entities (e.g., God, Santa Claus). Although parents rarely denied the existence of endorsed beings explicitly, they were more likely to signal a lack of expertise (e.g., "Well, we don't actually know this, but I think he is really big.") or consensus (e.g., "Some people think [God] is, like this big guy up in the sky.") about these entities as compared to scientific entities.</p> <p>In a subsequent study, McLoughlin et al. ([<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref14">25</reflink>]) found that, regardless of their religious background, U.S. parents and their children were more confident about the existence of some unobservable scientific (i.e., germs, oxygen, electricity) as compared to religious (i.e., God, heaven, angels) entities, although the belief in religious entities increased with increased religiosity. Their analysis of unmoderated parent–child conversations about these entities revealed that parents expressed more cues to uncertainty (e.g., "maybe," "perhaps," "could be") when conversing about religion as compared to scientific entities although this tendency declined with increased religiosity. Most importantly, the pattern of linguistic cues parents used predicted their children's existence judgments for religious entities. More recently, McLoughlin et al. ([<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref15">24</reflink>]) observed similar patterns in their analysis of parent–child conversations from Iran and China, two countries that differ markedly in terms of their religious profiles. In both countries, parents produced more uncertainty cues when talking about religion as compared to scientific entities.</p> <p>To further probe such differential confidence, Davoodi et al. ([<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref16">8</reflink>]) asked younger (5‐ to 6‐year‐old) and older (10‐ to 11‐year‐old) Iranian children and their parents about the existence of several scientific (germs, oxygen, electricity) and religious (God, Heaven, angels) phenomena. Given that religious affiliation is quite homogenous in Iran—99% of Iranians subscribe to Islam (Haerpfer et al., [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref17">12</reflink>])—and given that religion has a pervasive role in the everyday lives of Iranians, confidence in the existence of both types of entities might be expected. Indeed, the parents did express a high level of confidence in the existence of both scientific and religious phenomena. Nevertheless, echoing earlier findings, they were more confident about the existence of scientific phenomena. Moreover, this differential confidence was evident in older children's judgments as well. Only younger children expressed a similar level of confidence in scientific and religious phenomena.</p> <p>These findings confirm that greater confidence in scientific as compared to religious entities is not unique to Western cultures where religious belief is quite heterogenous. Even in a country like Iran—where a very large majority subscribe to the same religious tradition, so that there is likely to be relatively uniform testimony in support of religious phenomena—confidence in scientific entities is somewhat higher than confidence in religious entities.</p> <p>To explore whether a similar pattern of differential confidence is found in a religious minority, Cui et al. ([<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref18">6</reflink>]) interviewed Christian as well as secular Chinese parents and their children. Note that the vast majority of the Chinese population (86%) does not subscribe to any religious belief (Haerpfer et al., [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref19">12</reflink>]), so that the beliefs of Christian Chinese families are not endorsed by the wider Chinese community. As expected, secular parents and their children were very certain about the existence of scientific entities, but skeptical about the existence of religious entities. Christian parents also displayed this differential pattern of confidence, albeit in a more modest fashion. Only their children expressed similar levels of confidence in scientific and religious entities.</p> <hd id="AN0180986883-3">Justification of belief in scientific and religious phenomena</hd> <p>The studies discussed so far suggest that children's beliefs in the existence of invisible scientific and religious phenomena are guided by the pattern of testimony they receive from other people. Children express confidence in the existence of both scientific and religious phenomena despite their invisibility. Nevertheless, especially at older ages, children echo the pattern seen among adults—they express greater confidence in scientific as compared to religious phenomena.</p> <p>Children's justifications for their existence judgments provide further evidence for the role of testimony in learning about invisible scientific and religious entities. When asked how they know that a given entity exists, children rarely mention a direct encounter with either type of entity (Guerrero et al., [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref20">11</reflink>]; Harris et al., [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref21">18</reflink>]). Instead, they often refer to what they have typically heard from other people about the properties of that entity, such as germs can cause sickness, or that God created humans. Children also refer to the specific sources of their belief from time to time (e.g., "My mummy told me that..."), but this strategy is less frequent than referring to the properties of the entity. Note that although both types of strategies (i.e., mentioning well‐known properties of the entity and mentioning a specific testimonial source) exemplify the justification of a belief via testimony, only the latter involves an explicit awareness or acknowledgment that the belief has a testimonial basis.</p> <p>References to testimony for both types of entities continue into adulthood. However, the typical form of justification shifts from what others say about the properties of the entity (i.e., the <emph>content</emph> of the testimony) to who says it (i.e., the <emph>source</emph> of the testimony). For example, U.S. college students typically refer to sources of authority when justifying their belief in scientific (e.g., "<emph>because I trust my physics teacher</emph>"), as well as religious entities (e.g., "<emph>because it is in the Bible</emph>") (Shtulman, [<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref22">29</reflink>]). One plausible explanation for this shift is that awareness of the testimonial basis of belief in invisible entities increases with age (Harris & Corriveau, [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref23">15</reflink>]).</p> <p>However, this increase with age in references to sources of authority was observed in a culture, notably the United States, where the majority subscribes to the same religion. What is the pattern of justification in a culture where religious beliefs are not endorsed by the majority? To address this question, Davoodi et al. ([<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref24">7</reflink>]) asked how 4‐ to 11‐year‐old children from three markedly different religious groups justify their belief in religious as compared to scientific entities. Children from the United States were students in private Catholic schools, children from Iran were from Muslim homes, and children from China were from Protestant homes. Thus, the U.S. and Iranian children were growing up in cultures where their religious beliefs were endorsed by the majority. By contrast, the Chinese children were growing up in a culture where their religious beliefs were not endorsed, and are even discouraged, by the majority.</p> <p>When justifying their belief in the scientific entities, all children invoked some well‐known characteristics of those entities (e.g., "When we become sick, germs go into our bodies"), echoing earlier findings. Children's justifications for their belief in religious entities, however, diverged depending on their respective communities: whereas U.S. and Iranian children elaborated on some typical characteristics of the entities when justifying their belief (e.g., "In everything we do, God is with us"), Chinese children referenced a source for their beliefs (e.g., "It's in the Bible"), similar to the pattern previously observed among adult participants by Shtulman ([<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref25">29</reflink>]). A plausible implication of this pattern of findings is that children who grow up in a religious community that exists alongside a secular community are sensitized to the source of their religious beliefs earlier than peers who do not encounter such divergence of belief.</p> <p>In sum, there is suggestive evidence that the way that children justify their beliefs in religious phenomena varies depending on their perception of a lack of consensus in their community regarding those phenomena. Nevertheless, more cross‐cultural research from countries that lack such a consensus is needed to solidify this conclusion. Christian children in China belong to a very small minority but a similar pattern might be observed among children who are not part of a minority but may nonetheless encounter a lack of consensus. In the next section, we explain why Türkiye, given its current cultural and religious polarization, offers a suitable context for further study of this possibility.</p> <hd id="AN0180986883-4">The history of Turkish secularization and the role of religion in Türkiye</hd> <p>The collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1922 eventually led to the creation of modern Türkiye in the hands of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (Esposito et al., [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref26">9</reflink>]). Because secularization was seen as the basic requirement for transforming a "backward and traditional (religious)" society into a modern and rational one, Ataturk and the Kemalist elite implemented a number of radical reforms to detach the state and public life from religious symbols and institutions (Esposito et al., [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref27">9</reflink>]; Keyman, [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref28">21</reflink>]). The role of religion in state affairs came to an end following the elimination of the Sultanate in 1922, the proclamation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, and the abolition of the Caliphate (a role akin to the papacy in Catholicism) in 1924. Starting from 1924, via a number of sweeping laws, education was controlled by the state, religious schools and sects were outlawed, the Directorate of Religious Affairs—a state‐governed institution—was established to regulate public religious activities and practices, the religious law was replaced with the Swiss civil code and the Italian criminal code, and the Ottoman alphabet (based on Arabic letters) was replaced with the Latin alphabet. Finally, religion and state were separated in the constitution of 1928, with the removal of the article asserting "the state's religion is Islam." A new dress code outlawing religious symbols and dress in public was accepted in 1935. In sum, secularization included not only the separation of religion and the state but also the removal of religion from public affairs and its regulation by the state. It was thought that the detachment of religion from the state and public institutions (i.e., so‐called <emph>objective</emph> secularization) would eventually lead to the decline of religion in cultural life and in the formation of a modern self (i.e., so‐called <emph>subjective</emph> secularization) (see Keyman, [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref29">21</reflink>], for further discussion).</p> <p>Although Türkiye has been effective in achieving <emph>objective</emph> secularization, it has not been as effective in achieving <emph>subjective</emph> secularization. Religion has remained influential in the construction of Turkish identity (Göle, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref30">10</reflink>]; Keyman, [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref31">21</reflink>]). Indeed, since the transition from single‐party to multi‐party parliamentary democracy in 1945, Turkish politics has faced a resurgence of Islam in the hands of center‐right parties which politicized Islam (Keyman, [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref32">21</reflink>]; Öniş, [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref33">26</reflink>]). The strict boundary between religion and secularism began to erode during the Cold War years, because the state considered religion a remedy for the "communist threat" (Kandiyoti & Emanet, [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref34">20</reflink>]). The military coup in 1980, which adopted the "Turkish‐Islamic" synthesis as the official national identity (Hemmati, [<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref35">19</reflink>]; Kandiyoti & Emanet, [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref36">20</reflink>]), marked a resurgence of state‐supported Islam. Compulsory religious education was introduced, the number of <emph>Imam Hatip</emph> Schools (vocational schools which were originally established to train government‐employed ministers and preachers following the unification of education in 1924) expanded massively and control over religious sects loosened (Baran, [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref37">4</reflink>]).</p> <p>Turkish secularization has faced two conflicting challenges. On the one hand, it has been criticized, mostly by Islamists, for being too restrictive, and for not allowing democratic representation. On the other hand, given the continued existence of the Directorate of Religious Affairs, which has been accused of voicing Sunni Islam to the exclusion of other Islamic traditions as well as minority religious beliefs, it has also been criticized for not being secular enough (Keyman, [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref38">21</reflink>]). These longstanding challenges, combined with the pro‐Islamic governance by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the last 21 years, have rendered Türkiye "one of the most polarized countries in the world" during the 2010s, with the population divided and frozen into two major blocs that diverge in terms of their political behavior, self‐identity, and lifestyles (as discussed in Somer, [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref39">30</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref40">31</reflink>]).</p> <p>In sum, given the complicated relation between religion and state in Türkiye, it presents an interesting case in comparison to the cultures discussed so far. It is a Muslim majority country like Iran; according to the most recent World Values Survey (Haerpfer et al., [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref41">12</reflink>]), 98% of the Turkish population identifies with Islam although some recent polls report a smaller percentage and a significant decrease in religious affiliation, as well as in religiosity (Konda, [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref42">22</reflink>]). Nevertheless, only 66% of the population consider themselves as religious (in comparisons to 83.2% in Iran), 60% consider religion as "very important" in their life (in comparison to 70% in Iran), and 40.6% consider religious faith as an important quality that "children can be encouraged to learn at home" (in comparison to 54.5% in Iran) according to the same survey. Indeed, unlike Iran, Türkiye is also a constitutionally secular state since 1928, with an unresolved and sustained tension between the religious and secular.</p> <hd id="AN0180986883-5">Current study</hd> <p>As discussed above, there is growing evidence that children's beliefs in the existence of invisible scientific and religious entities, as well as how they justify those beliefs, vary depending on the community consensus surrounding these entities. To extend the scope of this evidence, we interviewed parents and children in Türkiye regarding their beliefs in high‐consensus scientific and religious phenomena.</p> <p>All primary and secondary schools in Türkiye—public or private—are required to follow a uniform curriculum, which involves a two‐hour mandatory class in religion every week starting from grade 4 (age 9). These classes primarily focus on the existence of God, God's properties, the emergence of the Quran (the holy book of Muslims), the life of the Prophet Muhammad, angels, and life after death, although other religious traditions are also touched upon. Accordingly, we divided child participants into a younger group (5‐to 6‐year‐olds) and an older group (10‐ to 11‐year‐olds) in order to assess the potential role of formal religious education on children's judgments. This division of age groups is also consistent with earlier studies using the same procedure (see Cui et al., [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref43">6</reflink>]; Davoodi et al., [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref44">8</reflink>]). Children judged if various scientific (germs, oxygen, electricity) and religious (God, Heaven, angels) entities exist and indicated how confident they were about their existence judgments. They were also asked to justify their existence judgments. Similarly, parents were asked to rate their level of confidence in the existence of the same entities. We picked these entities because they were used in previous studies and thus enabled direct comparisons with those earlier studies (see Cui et al., [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref45">6</reflink>]; Davoodi et al., [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref46">8</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref47">7</reflink>]; Guerrero et al., [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref48">11</reflink>]; Harris et al., [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref49">18</reflink>], 2007). Given the distinctive cultural and socio‐political characteristics of Türkiye as discussed above, we made the following predictions.</p> <p>For the scientific entities, we expected to replicate earlier findings. More specifically, we predicted that all children, as well as their parents, would express a very high level of confidence in the existence of the scientific entities. We also predicted that, again echoing earlier findings, children would justify their belief in the scientific entities primarily by elaborating on some well‐known characteristics of those entities.</p> <p>We predicted that all participants would also express a high level of confidence in the religious entities, but we expected this confidence to be lower than for the scientific entities. Thus, we expected to replicate the pattern of differential confidence observed in earlier studies. We anticipated, however, that it would be more pronounced than in Iran (Davoodi et al., [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref50">8</reflink>]), given that the Turkish population is relatively less religious than the Iranian population, and that given Türkiye's history of secularization, religion is not as pervasive in everyday life and in public institutions as it is in Iran. Because, as noted above, there is mandatory religious education in Türkiye starting at grade four (age 9), we anticipated that older children would express greater confidence in the existence of religious entities compared to younger children.</p> <p>We entertained two possibilities regarding Turkish children's justifications for religious entities. One possibility was that—in line with earlier findings in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Iran—they would elaborate on the properties of those entities that they would typically hear about via testimony from other people. The other possibility, given children's likely exposure to the long‐standing divergence between the religious and secular communities in Türkiye, was that Turkish children would primarily refer to the source of their knowledge when justifying their belief in the religious entities, thereby reflecting their sensitivity to the contested nature of religion. In this respect, we anticipated that their justifications might echo the pattern displayed by Protestant Chinese children discussed above. Such a pattern of justifications would show that membership of a religious minority is not necessary for the emergence of children's sensitivity to the source of their religious beliefs—exposure to divergence between religious and secular communities is sufficient.</p> <p>The current study is based on both confirmatory and exploratory approaches. The investigation of the level of belief in scientific versus religious entities can be considered as a confirmatory effort given that our goal was to examine the cross‐cultural consistency of the differential confidence hypothesis discussed above. The investigation of how Turkish children justify their belief in scientific entities was also confirmatory as previous research showed that children from markedly different societies justify their belief in these entities in similar ways. The investigation of how Turkish children justify their belief in religious entities, however, can be considered as a relatively exploratory effort—we entertained different patterns of responses given Türkiye's special socio‐political context.</p> <hd id="AN0180986883-6">METHOD</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0180986883-7">Participants</hd> <p>A total of forty‐six 5‐ to 6‐year‐old (22 girls, <emph>M</emph><subs>age</subs> = 5.50 years, SD<subs>age</subs> = 0.51 years) and forty‐four 10‐ to 11‐year‐old (21 girls, <emph>M</emph><subs>age</subs> = 10.41, SD<subs>age</subs> = 0.50) Turkish children and their parents (<emph>n</emph> = 84, 79 mothers, <emph>M</emph><subs>age</subs> = 38.37, SD<subs>age</subs> = 4.26) participated from 4/15/2021 to 12/04/2021. There was one sibling pair among the children. Five parents failed to complete the study. The study was a part of a larger project which aimed to assess the role of parental transmission in children's religious and scientific beliefs across different cultures. In line with our previous studies using the same design (e.g., Cui et al, [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref51">6</reflink>]), our goal was to recruit at least 40 children per age group. Participants were recruited using the participant pool at Boğaziçi University and via word of mouth. Although approximately half of the families (<emph>n</emph> = 47) were from Istanbul, 16 different cities (Adana, Ankara, Antalya, Balikesir, Bursa, Denizli, Giresun, Kocaeli, Izmir, Manisa, Mersin, Rize, Sakarya, Samsun, Tekirdağ, Trabzon) from 5 out of 7 geographical regions of Türkiye (Agean, Black Sea, Central Anatolia, Marmara, Mediterranean) were represented.</p> <p>We asked the parents a set of questions to assess their religious affiliation and level of religiosity. The distribution of religious affiliation was as follows: 83.3% of parents were Muslim, 1.2% were Christian, and 15.5% were unaffiliated. Parents also rated how religious they were using a scale that ranged from 1 (not religious at all) to 5 (very religious) with 3 representing the midpoint or neutrality. Religiosity was normally distributed (<emph>M</emph> = 2.98, SD = 1.19) with 38% of the participants above the midpoint, 35% below the midpoint, 27% at the midpoint. Parents also reported the frequency of their worship on a scale from 1 (never) to 7 (more than once a week). Twelve percent of parents reported attending public worship once a week or more frequently whereas 28% reported never attending public worship. With respect to private worship, 56% reported engaging in it once a week or more frequently whereas 13% reported never engaging in private worship.</p> <p>To assess the degree to which our child participants were exposed to religion, we also asked parents if they talked to their children about religious and/or spiritual matters or not, and if their children were taking religion classes (in addition to mandatory religion classes at school) or not. According to parents' responses, 62% talked to their children (42% older and 20% younger) about religious matters, and 17% of children (16% older and 1% younger) were taking extracurricular religion classes (e.g., how to read the Quran, the Prophet Mohammad's life and character, Islamic rules and principles).</p> <p>Parents also reported their highest level of education. Among 84 parents, 9.5% had a high school degree, 48.8% had a college degree, and 39.3% had a graduate degree. One participant (1.2%) had a less than high school degree and one participant (1.2%) did not report their highest level of education. Lastly, parents reported their socioeconomic status (SES) using the MacArthur Self‐reported Socioeconomic Status Scale (see Adler et al., [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref52">1</reflink>]) with a range from 1 (lowest SES when reverse coded) to 10 (highest SES when reverse coded); 17.9% reported a low, 72.6% reported a middle, and 8.3% reported a high SES (<emph>M</emph> = 5.92, SD = 1.65). One parent (1.2%) did not report their SES. In sum, the majority of the parents were Muslim and moderately religious. Although the level of parents' education was high with the majority having a college or higher degree, parents' SES and the level of religiosity varied considerably.</p> <p>This study was approved by the Human Subjects Institutional Review Board at Boğaziçi University (protocol number: 2018/11). The dataset and the script for statistical analyses are available at https://osf.io/sem3a/?view_only=d03cc7190c46468ab1bb8bdc1f8394c9.</p> <hd id="AN0180986883-8">Materials and procedure</hd> <p>All materials were first translated from English to Turkish and piloted with a group of adults and children by native research assistants to ensure cultural relevance.</p> <p>Adults completed the study online using Google Surveys. They rated their level of belief in the existence of the three scientific entities (germs [mikrop], oxygen [oksijen], and electricity [elektrik]) and the three religious entities (God [Allah/Tanrı], Heaven [Cennet], and angels [melekler]) on a scale from 1 (<emph>definitely does not exist</emph>) to 7 (<emph>definitely exists</emph>).</p> <p>Children participated online via Zoom. First, they went through a warm‐up session in which they were asked to judge the reality status of two entities (i.e., "Are dogs real or not real?"; "Are flying dogs real or not real?"). All children passed the warm‐up session with no issues. Next, children were presented with the six test items mentioned above, one by one and in a random order. The experimenter named the entity and children were first asked if they have heard about the entity. If children said "no," the experimenter dropped that entity and continued with the next entity. If children said "yes," the experimenter asked if the entity exists or not (e.g., "Is God real or not real?"). Following their response, children were asked to indicate how confident they were in their judgment (i.e., "Are you sure or not very sure?"). Lastly, children were asked to justify their response (e.g., "So, you said that God is real/not real. How do you know that God is real/not real?").</p> <hd id="AN0180986883-9">RESULTS</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0180986883-10">Parents' judgments of invisible entities</hd> <p>Table 1 presents parents' mean existence ratings for each entity, with a range from 1 (<emph>definitely does not exist</emph>) to 7 (<emph>definitely exists</emph>). As shown in Table 1, parents were confident about the existence of both religious and scientific entities, but they were more confident about the existence of scientific entities. Figure 1 represents parents' existence judgments as a function of domain and religiosity. As seen in Figure 1, there is no relation between religiosity and belief in scientific entities whereas belief in religious entities increases with an increase in religiosity.</p> <p>1 TABLE Parents' mean existence ratings of each entity by domain.</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead valign="bottom"><tr><th align="left">Domain</th><th align="left">Entity</th><th align="left">Mean (SD)</th></tr></thead><tbody valign="top"><tr><td align="left">Scientific</td><td align="left">Germs</td><td align="char" char=".">6.77 (0.83)</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Oxygen</td><td align="char" char=".">6.77 (0.83)</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Electricity</td><td align="char" char=".">6.77 (0.83)</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Religious</td><td align="left">God</td><td align="char" char=".">5.88 (1.82)</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Heaven</td><td align="char" char=".">4.99 (2.31)</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Angels</td><td align="char" char=".">5.06 (2.33)</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/CDV/01sep24/cdev14118-fig-0001.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNXb4kSepq84yOvqOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="cdev14118-fig-0001.jpg" title="1 The relation between parents' existence judgments and religiosity by the domain of entity." /> </p> <p></p> <p>To confirm these patterns, we ran a mixed‐effects linear regression model using the <emph>lmer</emph> function in the <emph>lme4</emph> package in R statistical software (Version 4.3.1). In our initial model, we entered Domain (Scientific, Religious) as a fixed effect and Participant ID as a random effect to control for the participant‐level variability. The analysis revealed a significant effect of Domain, <emph>β</emph> = 1.48, SE = .11, <emph>p</emph> < .001, odds ratio (OR) = 4.41, confidence interval (CI) [3.53, 5.51], confirming that parents were more confident about the existence of scientific entities as compared to religious entities. Given that adults were very confident about the existence of scientific entities with little to no variability, in the following analysis, we focused on parents' judgments of religious entities only.</p> <p>In our first model, we entered Religiosity (ranged from 1 to 5) as a fixed effect and Participant ID as a random effect and observed an effect of Religiosity, <emph>β</emph> = 1.03, SE = .15, <emph>p</emph> < .001, OR = 2.81, CI [2.11, 3.75]. In our second model, we entered SES (ranged from 1 to 10), as well as Religiosity, as fixed effects to assess if Religiosity was still a significant predictor after controlling for SES. The effect of Religiosity remained significant, <emph>β</emph> = 1.05, SE = .15, <emph>p</emph> < .001, OR = 2.85, CI [2.14, 3.79], and there was no effect of SES, <emph>β</emph> = 0.14, SE = .10, <emph>p</emph> = .17, OR = 1.16, CI [0.94, 1.42]. In sum, overall, parents expressed a higher belief in scientific as compared to religious entities. Parents' belief in religious entities, however, increased as their level of religiosity increased.</p> <hd id="AN0180986883-12">Children's judgments of invisible entities</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0180986883-13">Age and exposure to religion</hd> <p>As mentioned earlier, parents reported if they talked to their children about religious matters (coded as 1) or not (coded as 0) and if their children took extra‐curricular religion classes (coded as 1) or not (coded as 0). We ran a set of chi‐square analyses to assess if the likelihood of parental talk about religion and extracurricular religion classes was related to children's age. The results showed an association between Age and Parental Talk about Religion <emph>χ</emph><sups>2</sups>(df = 1, <emph>N</emph> = 84) = 16.36, <emph>p</emph> < .001, Cramer's <emph>V</emph> = .44, as well as an association between Age and Extra‐Curricular Religion Class, <emph>χ</emph><sups>2</sups>(df = 1, <emph>N</emph> = 82) = 11.71, <emph>p</emph> < .001, Cramer's <emph>V</emph> = .38, indicating that older children were more likely to be exposed to religion than younger children.</p> <hd id="AN0180986883-14">Familiarity with the entities</hd> <p>Table 2 represents the percentage of children who reported having heard about all three, two, one, or none of the entities by domain (scientific, religious) and age group (Younger, Older). As seen in Table 2, all of the older children were familiar with all of the scientific and the religious entities. Although the vast majority of younger children were also familiar with all the scientific entities, they were not as familiar with the religious entities.</p> <p>2 TABLE The percentage of children who reported having heard about the entities (3 total) by domain and age.</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead valign="bottom"><tr><th align="left">Domain</th><th align="left">Item familiarity</th><th align="left">5‐ to 6‐year‐olds</th><th align="left">10‐ to 11‐year‐olds</th></tr></thead><tbody valign="top"><tr><td align="left">Scientific</td><td align="left">0 items</td><td align="char" char=".">0</td><td align="char" char=".">0</td></tr><tr><td align="left">1 item</td><td align="char" char=".">0</td><td align="char" char=".">0</td></tr><tr><td align="left">2 items</td><td align="char" char=".">8.7</td><td align="char" char=".">0</td></tr><tr><td align="left">3 items</td><td align="char" char=".">91.3</td><td align="char" char=".">100</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Religious</td><td align="left">0 items</td><td align="char" char=".">2.3</td><td align="char" char=".">0</td></tr><tr><td align="left">1 item</td><td align="char" char=".">18.2</td><td align="char" char=".">0</td></tr><tr><td align="left">2 items</td><td align="char" char=".">13.6</td><td align="char" char=".">0</td></tr><tr><td align="left">3 items</td><td align="char" char=".">65.9</td><td align="char" char=".">100</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <hd id="AN0180986883-15">Existence judgments</hd> <p>Recall that once children judged whether an entity is real or not real, they were asked to report their level of confidence in that judgment (i.e., "Are you sure or not very sure?"). As a result, children's level of confidence in the existence of entities fell into four ordered categories: very sure that an entity exists (<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref53">4</reflink>), not very sure that an entity exists (<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref54">3</reflink>), not very sure that an entity does not exist (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref55">2</reflink>), very sure that an entity does not exist (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref56">1</reflink>). Figure 2 displays the percentage of children's responses falling into each category of confidence by the domain of entity (scientific vs. religious) and age group (younger vs. older). As seen in Figure 2, children's level of confidence varied sharply by the domain of entity. Both younger and older children were very confident about the existence of scientific entities excluding a few responses whereas they were less confident about the existence of religious entities, especially younger children.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/CDV/01sep24/cdev14118-fig-0002.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNXb4kSepq84yOvqOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="cdev14118-fig-0002.jpg" title="2 Percentage of responses falling into each category of confidence by the domain of entity and age." /> </p> <p></p> <p>To examine these patterns, we ran a mixed effects ordinal logistic regression analysis on children's existence ratings with "very sure of nonexistence" as the reference level using the <emph>clmm</emph> function of the <emph>ordinal</emph> package in R statistical software (Version 4.3.1). In our initial model, we entered Domain (Scientific, Religious) as a fixed effect and Participant ID as a random effect. The analysis revealed a significant effect of Domain, <emph>β</emph> = 3.72, SE = .49, <emph>p</emph> < .001, OR = 41.16, CI [15.73, 107.73], confirming the sharp differences in the level of confidence between scientific and religious entities observed in Figure 2. Given the lack of variance in children's judgments of scientific entities, in the subsequent analysis, we focused solely on children's judgments of religious entities. The results of this analysis are summarized in Table 3.</p> <p>3 TABLE Results from the mixed effects ordinal logistic regression model predicting children's level of confidence for religious entities using age, parent religiosity, and family SES as predictors.</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead valign="bottom"><tr><th align="left" /><th align="left"><italic>β</italic> (SE)</th><th align="left"><italic>Z</italic></th><th align="left">OR</th><th align="left">95% CI for OR</th></tr><tr><th align="left">Lower</th><th align="left">Upper</th></tr></thead><tbody valign="top"><tr><td align="left">Model 1</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Intercept (Level 1)</td><td align="char" char=".">−2.02 (.37)</td><td align="char" char=".">−5.51</td><td align="char" char=".">0.13</td><td align="char" char=".">0.06</td><td align="char" char=".">0.27</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Intercept (Level 2)</td><td align="char" char=".">−1.10 (.33)</td><td align="char" char=".">−3.33</td><td align="char" char=".">0.33</td><td align="char" char=".">0.17</td><td align="char" char=".">0.64</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Intercept (Level 3)</td><td align="char" char=".">−0.29 (.31)</td><td align="char" char=".">−0.93</td><td align="char" char=".">0.75</td><td align="char" char=".">0.40</td><td align="char" char=".">1.38</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Age (younger as reference)</td><td align="char" char=".">1.11 (.47)<xref ref-type="fn" rid="tfn2" /></td><td align="char" char=".">2.39</td><td align="char" char=".">3.04</td><td align="char" char=".">1.23</td><td align="char" char=".">7.57</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Number of observations</td><td align="char" char=".">244</td><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr><tr><td align="left">Number of groups</td><td align="char" char=".">88</td><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr><tr><td align="left">Log likelihood</td><td align="char" char=".">−240.56</td><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr><tr><td align="left">AIC</td><td align="char" char=".">491.12</td><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr><tr><td align="left">Model 2</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Intercept (Level 1)</td><td align="char" char=".">−0.25 (.89)</td><td align="char" char=".">−0.28</td><td align="char" char=".">0.78</td><td align="char" char=".">0.14</td><td align="char" char=".">4.46</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Intercept (Level 2)</td><td align="char" char=".">0.69 (.89)</td><td align="char" char=".">0.77</td><td align="char" char=".">1.99</td><td align="char" char=".">0.35</td><td align="char" char=".">11.50</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Intercept (Level 3)</td><td align="char" char=".">1.49 (.90)</td><td align="char" char=".">1.65</td><td align="char" char=".">4.43</td><td align="char" char=".">0.75</td><td align="char" char=".">26.05</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Age (younger as reference)</td><td align="char" char=".">0.85 (.43)<xref ref-type="fn" rid="tfn2" /></td><td align="char" char=".">1.98</td><td align="char" char=".">2.33</td><td align="char" char=".">1.01</td><td align="char" char=".">5.38</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Religiosity</td><td align="char" char=".">0.72 (.19)<xref ref-type="fn" rid="tfn3" /></td><td align="char" char=".">3.82</td><td align="char" char=".">2.04</td><td align="char" char=".">1.42</td><td align="char" char=".">2.95</td></tr><tr><td align="left">SES</td><td align="char" char=".">−0.06 (.12)</td><td align="char" char=".">−0.48</td><td align="char" char=".">0.94</td><td align="char" char=".">0.75</td><td align="char" char=".">1.19</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Number of observations</td><td align="char" char=".">221</td><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr><tr><td align="left">Number of groups</td><td align="char" char=".">80</td><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr><tr><td align="left">Log likelihood</td><td align="char" char=".">−213.90</td><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr><tr><td align="left">AIC</td><td align="char" char=".">441.79</td><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>1 Abbreviations: AIC, Akaike's information criterion; CI, confidence interval; OR, odds ratio; SES, socioeconomic status.</p> <ulist> <item>2 * <emph>p</emph> < .05;</item> <item>3 *** <emph>p</emph> < .001.</item> </ulist> <p>In our first model, we entered Age (Younger, Older) as a fixed effect. Participant ID was entered as a random effect to account for within‐participant variability. As seen in Table 3 (top panel), this model revealed a significant effect of Age, <emph>β</emph> = 1.11, SE = .47, <emph>p</emph> = .017, OR = 3.04, CI [1.23, 7.57]. In our second model (Table 3, bottom panel), we added parents' Religiosity and SES as a predictor, as we did for parents' judgments, and observed a main effect of Religiosity, <emph>β</emph> = 0.72, SE = .19, <emph>p</emph> < .001, OR = 2.04, CI [1.42, 2.95], but no effect of SES, <emph>β</emph> = −0.06, SE = .12, <emph>p</emph> = .62, OR = 0.94, CI [0.75, 1.19].</p> <p>In sum, echoing the judgments of their parents, and the pattern observed in Figure 1, children were more confident about the existence of scientific entities as compared to religious entities. Their confidence in religious entities increased with age and parents' religiosity.</p> <hd id="AN0180986883-17">The relation between parents' and children's existence judgments</hd> <p>Given the very low variability in both parents' and children's judgments of scientific entities, we were able to analyze the relation between parents' and children's judgments for the religious entities only. In our model, we entered Children's Judgments as the outcome. Parents' Judgments, Age (Younger vs. older), and the interaction between these two variables were entered as fixed effects whereas participant ID was entered as a random effect. As summarized in Table 4, this model revealed a significant interaction between Parents' Judgments and Age. As seen in Figure 3, there was no relation between the judgments of younger children and their parents' whereas older children's confidence in the existence of religious entities increased with their parents' confidence.</p> <p>4 TABLE Results from the mixed effects ordinal logistic regression model predicting children's existence ratings for religious entities using age and parents' ratings as predictors.</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead valign="bottom"><tr><th align="left" /><th align="left"><italic>β</italic> (SE)</th><th align="left"><italic>Z</italic></th><th align="left">OR</th><th align="left">95% CI for OR</th></tr><tr><th align="left">Lower</th><th align="left">Upper</th></tr></thead><tbody valign="top"><tr><td align="left">Model 1</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Intercept (Level 1)</td><td align="char" char=".">−1.87 (.79)</td><td align="char" char=".">−2.37</td><td align="char" char=".">0.15</td><td align="char" char=".">0.03</td><td align="char" char=".">0.72</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Intercept (Level 2)</td><td align="char" char=".">−0.97 (.77)</td><td align="char" char=".">−1.25</td><td align="char" char=".">0.38</td><td align="char" char=".">0.08</td><td align="char" char=".">1.73</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Intercept (Level 3)</td><td align="char" char=".">−0.14 (.76)</td><td align="char" char=".">−0.19</td><td align="char" char=".">0.87</td><td align="char" char=".">0.19</td><td align="char" char=".">3.85</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Age (younger as reference)</td><td align="char" char=".">−1.43 (.97)</td><td align="char" char=".">−1.46</td><td align="char" char=".">0.24</td><td align="char" char=".">0.04</td><td align="char" char=".">1.64</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Parents' judgments</td><td align="char" char=".">0.01 (.13)</td><td align="char" char=".">0.08</td><td align="char" char=".">1.01</td><td align="char" char=".">0.78</td><td align="char" char=".">1.31</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Age × parents' judgments</td><td align="char" char=".">0.49 (.18)<xref ref-type="fn" rid="tfn5" /></td><td align="char" char=".">2.68</td><td align="char" char=".">1.64</td><td align="char" char=".">1.14</td><td align="char" char=".">2.35</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Number of observations</td><td align="char" char=".">226</td><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr><tr><td align="left">Number of groups</td><td align="char" char=".">82</td><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr><tr><td align="left">Log likelihood</td><td align="char" char=".">−215.86</td><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr><tr><td align="left">Akaike's information criterion</td><td align="char" char=".">445.73</td><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <ulist> <item>4 Abbreviations: CI, confidence interval; OR, odds ratio.</item> <item>5 ** <emph>p</emph> < .01.</item> </ulist> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/CDV/01sep24/cdev14118-fig-0003.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNXb4kSepq84yOvqOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="cdev14118-fig-0003.jpg" title="3 The relation between parents' and children's existence judgments for religious entities as a function of age." /> </p> <p></p> <p>To confirm this pattern, we analyzed the judgments of religious entities within each age group after adjusting our alpha level (<emph>α</emph> = .025) for multiple comparisons. For younger children, the analysis could not be run due to low variability. For older children, however, the analysis revealed a significant effect of Parents' Judgments, <emph>β</emph> = 1.30, SE = .001, <emph>p</emph> < .001, OR = 3.67, CI [3.66, 3.68]. In sum, older children's level of belief in religious entities aligned with that of their parents.</p> <hd id="AN0180986883-19">Justifications</hd> <p>To examine the justifications children provided for their existence judgments, we adopted the coding scheme used in previous studies (Davoodi et al., [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref57">7</reflink>]; Harris et al., [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref58">18</reflink>]). The final coding categories, along with several examples for each, are provided in Table 5. None of the categories, with the exception of <emph>uninformative</emph>, were mutually exclusive. All justifications were coded by the first author and a native research assistant. Agreement between the coders was 92% (<emph>κ</emph> = 93). Disagreements were resolved via discussion.</p> <p>5 TABLE Description of coding categories for children's justifications.</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead valign="bottom"><tr><th align="left">Category</th><th align="left">Description</th><th align="left">Example</th></tr></thead><tbody valign="top"><tr><td align="left">Encounter</td><td align="left">Child refers to (not) having seen or experienced the entity, or to an incident related to the entity. Includes justifications that refer to others' experience with the entity.</td><td align="left">"I have never seen God before"; "My mom's friend caught germs"; "I have never seen or felt an angel before"</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Source</td><td align="left">Child refers to having heard or learned about the entity from a source. Includes justifications referring to testimony without mentioning a specific source.</td><td align="left">"My grandma told me about heaven"; "I hear about germs in the news sometimes"; "I heard about it [oxygen] in my science class"; "I have read/heard about it"</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Elaboration</td><td align="left">Child describes the entity, mentions properties or actions of the entity, or refers to causal processes or concepts associated with the entity.</td><td align="left">"If there was no electricity, then my tablet would not work right now"; "God created all of us"; "Angels help us; they sit on our shoulders"</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Uninformative</td><td align="left">Child does not provide sufficient information or gives an unrelated response. Includes "I don't know" responses as well as circular explanations</td><td align="left">"I don't know"; "Because I think so"; "My mom says I am her angel"</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>For younger children, uninformative justifications accounted for 30.4% of justifications in the domain of religion and 6.1% of the justifications in the domain of science. For older children, uninformative justifications were less frequent; they accounted for 13.6% of the justifications in the domain of religion and 0% of the justifications in the domain of science. Thus, in both age groups, informative justifications were produced more often for scientific as compared to religious entities (<emph>p</emph>s < .01). For the subsequent analysis, we focused solely on the three types of informative justifications—encounter, source, and elaboration—that children provided for their "real" judgments. (The analysis of justifications for "not real" judgments can be found in S1).</p> <p>The percentages of each type of informative justification following "real" judgments are presented in Figure 4. As seen in Figure 4, the distribution of these justifications varied sharply by the domain of entity. For scientific entities, children often justified their judgment by elaborating on the causal or other properties of the entity whereas for religious entities, they mostly referred to the source of their knowledge. This pattern was evident in both age groups although it was especially prevalent among older children. Also, although children sometimes referred to an encounter to justify their "real" judgment for scientific entities, with one exception, they never did so to justify their "real" judgment for religious entities.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/CDV/01sep24/cdev14118-fig-0004.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNXb4kSepq84yOvqOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="cdev14118-fig-0004.jpg" title="4 Percentage of three types of informative justification (encounter, source, elaboration) within "real" judgments by domain of entity (religious, scientific) and age." /> </p> <p></p> <p>To confirm this pattern, we ran a mixed‐effects binomial logistic regression analysis on the likelihood of each justification category using the <emph>glmer</emph> function of the <emph>lme4</emph> package in R statistical software (Version 4.0.3). Note that informative justification categories were not mutually exclusive. Therefore, whether a response was coded as an <emph>encounter</emph>, <emph>source</emph>, or <emph>elaboration</emph> or not was the outcome variable for the analysis of each justification category. We entered Domain (Religion as the reference category), Age (Younger as the reference category), and the two‐way interaction between these terms as fixed effects. Participant ID was entered as a random effect to account for within‐participant variability. The results are summarized in Table 6.</p> <p>6 TABLE Results from the mixed effects binomial logistic regression model predicting the likelihood of Elaboration justifications (top panel), Source justifications (middle panel), and Encounter justifications (bottom panel) for "real" judgments using domain and age as predictors.</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead valign="bottom"><tr><th align="left" /><th align="left"><italic>β</italic> (SE)</th><th align="left"><italic>Z</italic></th><th align="left">OR</th><th align="left">95% CI for OR</th></tr><tr><th align="left">Lower</th><th align="left">Upper</th></tr></thead><tbody valign="top"><tr><td align="left">Elaboration</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Intercept</td><td align="char" char=".">−1.59 (.30)<xref ref-type="fn" rid="tfn9" /></td><td align="char" char=".">−5.37</td><td align="char" char=".">0.20</td><td align="char" char=".">0.11</td><td align="char" char=".">0.36</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Domain</td><td align="char" char=".">1.47 (.32)<xref ref-type="fn" rid="tfn9" /></td><td align="char" char=".">4.54</td><td align="char" char=".">4.33</td><td align="char" char=".">2.30</td><td align="char" char=".">8.16</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Age</td><td align="char" char=".">0.52 (.38)</td><td align="char" char=".">1.36</td><td align="char" char=".">1.68</td><td align="char" char=".">0.80</td><td align="char" char=".">3.56</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Domain × age</td><td align="char" char=".">0.64 (.44)</td><td align="char" char=".">1.47</td><td align="char" char=".">1.90</td><td align="char" char=".">0.81</td><td align="char" char=".">4.47</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Number of observations</td><td align="char" char=".">508</td><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr><tr><td align="left">Number of groups</td><td align="char" char=".">90</td><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr><tr><td align="left">Log likelihood</td><td align="char" char=".">−299.5</td><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr><tr><td align="left">AIC</td><td align="char" char=".">609.1</td><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr><tr><td align="left">Source</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Intercept</td><td align="char" char=".">−0.62 (.25)<xref ref-type="fn" rid="tfn7" /></td><td align="char" char=".">−2.46</td><td align="char" char=".">0.54</td><td align="char" char=".">0.33</td><td align="char" char=".">0.88</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Domain</td><td align="char" char=".">−0.59 (.30)</td><td align="char" char=".">−1.96</td><td align="char" char=".">0.55</td><td align="char" char=".">0.31</td><td align="char" char=".">1.00</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Age</td><td align="char" char=".">0.98 (.34)<xref ref-type="fn" rid="tfn8" /></td><td align="char" char=".">2.85</td><td align="char" char=".">2.67</td><td align="char" char=".">1.36</td><td align="char" char=".">5.26</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Domain × age</td><td align="char" char=".">−1.43 (.44)<xref ref-type="fn" rid="tfn8" /></td><td align="char" char=".">−3.27</td><td align="char" char=".">0.24</td><td align="char" char=".">0.10</td><td align="char" char=".">0.56</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Number of observations</td><td align="char" char=".">508</td><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr><tr><td align="left">Number of groups</td><td align="char" char=".">90</td><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr><tr><td align="left">Log likelihood</td><td align="char" char=".">−297.4</td><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr><tr><td align="left">AIC</td><td align="char" char=".">604.8</td><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr><tr><td align="left">Encounter</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Intercept</td><td align="char" char=".">−1.50 (.23)</td><td align="char" char=".">−6.67</td><td align="char" char=".">0.22</td><td align="char" char=".">0.14</td><td align="char" char=".">0.35</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Age</td><td align="char" char=".">0.60 (.30)</td><td align="char" char=".">2.02</td><td align="char" char=".">1.82</td><td align="char" char=".">1.02</td><td align="char" char=".">3.25</td></tr><tr><td align="left">Number of observations</td><td align="char" char=".">264</td><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr><tr><td align="left">Number of groups</td><td align="char" char=".">90</td><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr><tr><td align="left">Log likelihood</td><td align="char" char=".">−141.8</td><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr><tr><td align="left">AIC</td><td align="char" char=".">289.6</td><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <ulist> <item>6 Abbreviations: AIC, Akaike's information criterion; CI, confidence interval; OR, odds ratio.</item> <item>7 * <emph>p</emph> < .001;</item> <item>8 ** <emph>p</emph> < .01;</item> <item>9 *** <emph>p</emph> < .05.</item> </ulist> <p>Table 6 (top panel) provides the summary of the analysis for the <emph>Elaboration</emph> justifications. As seen in that panel, the interaction between Domain and Age was not significant. Removing this interaction did not affect the fit of the model, (df = 1) = 2.15, <emph>p</emph> = .14, therefore we removed it from our model and reran our model with the main effects of Domain and Age. The analysis revealed a significant effect of Domain, <emph>β</emph> = 1.81, SE = .23, <emph>p</emph> < .001, OR = 6.11, CI [3.88, 9.64], as well as a significant effect of Age, <emph>β</emph> = 0.89, SE = .29, <emph>p</emph> < .01, <emph>OR</emph> = 2.44, CI [1.38, 4.30]. Elaborations were more frequent in the domain of science than they were in the domain of religion and older children provided more elaborations than did younger children.</p> <p>Table 6 (middle panel) provides the results of the analysis for the <emph>Source</emph> justifications. As seen in that panel, the analysis revealed a significant interaction between Domain and Age, <emph>β</emph> = −1.43, SE = .44, <emph>p</emph> < .01, OR = 0.24, CI [0.10, 0.56]. To explore this interaction further, we examined the pattern of the <emph>Source</emph> justifications within each domain and age group separately, after adjusting the alpha level to 0.025 for multiple comparisons. The results revealed that within the domain of religion, <emph>Source</emph> justifications were more frequent among the older children than younger children, <emph>β</emph> = 1.06, SE = .38, <emph>p</emph> < .01, OR = 2.88, CI [1.37, 6.06]. Within the domain of science, <emph>Source</emph> justifications were infrequent among both younger and older children, <emph>p</emph> = .27. The results also revealed that the frequency of young children's <emph>Source</emph> justifications did not differ significantly by Domain (<emph>p</emph> = .067) whereas older children provided more <emph>Source</emph> justifications for the religious entities as compared to the scientific entities, <emph>β</emph> = −2.26, SE = .37, <emph>p</emph> < .001, OR = 0.10, CI [0.051, 0.21].</p> <p>Table 6 (bottom panel) summarizes the results for the <emph>Encounter</emph> justifications. Because no Encounter justifications were provided for religious entities excluding one response, we analyzed the likelihood of providing an Encounter justification for scientific entities only. As seen in the bottom panel of Table 6, the effect of Age on the likelihood of providing an Encounter justification was not significant (<emph>p</emph> = .04) once the adjusted alpha level was taken into account.</p> <p>In sum, confirming the patterns evident in Figure 3, source justifications were more frequent for religious entities than for scientific entities among older children but not among younger children. Elaborations were more frequent for scientific entities than religious entities in both age groups.</p> <hd id="AN0180986883-21">DISCUSSION</hd> <p>In the last two decades, there has been a growth in research exploring the role of testimony in children's ontological judgments about phenomena that are ordinarily inaccessible to first‐hand observation. Earlier findings supported the claim that children's primary source of knowledge for both types of phenomena is the testimony provided by other people. Children were confident about the existence of phenomena that are endorsed by others—whether scientific or supernatural—and justified their belief in them similarly, referring to the common properties of the entities that they often heard about. Nevertheless, children expressed higher confidence in scientific as compared to supernatural phenomena (see Harris & Koenig, [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref59">16</reflink>]; Payir et al., [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref60">27</reflink>] for a review). Subsequent studies supported this conclusion, providing cross‐cultural evidence that children's ontological judgments of invisible entities are sensitive to the community consensus surrounding those entities (Cui et al., [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref61">6</reflink>]; Davoodi et al., [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref62">8</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref63">7</reflink>]; Guerrero et al., [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref64">11</reflink>]; Harris et al., [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref65">14</reflink>]). To extend the scope of this evidence, we investigated beliefs in invisible scientific and religious entities among children and their parents in Türkiye, a country with a longstanding tension between the religious and secular.</p> <p>Our results revealed striking domain variation in such beliefs, as well as in the way those beliefs are justified. Children and their parents were more confident about the existence of the scientific as compared to the religious entities. Moreover, among older children, confidence in the existence of religious entities aligned with their parents' confidence. Lastly, children justified their belief in scientific entities primarily by elaborating on the general properties of these entities, properties that they are likely to hear about from others whereas, whereas they justified their belief in religious entities primarily by referring to the source of their belief, especially in the older age group. Below, we discuss each of these findings in more detail in relation to previous findings.</p> <p>Supporting our predictions, Turkish parents were very confident that scientific entities exist. Taken together with the findings from the United States (Shtulman, [<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref66">29</reflink>]), Iran (Davoodi et al., [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref67">8</reflink>]), and China (Cui et al., [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref68">6</reflink>]), this finding strongly indicates that there is a wide‐ranging consensus among adults regarding the existence of these entities, regardless of religious background. Although Turkish parents were also confident about the existence of religious entities to a large extent, as expected in a Muslim‐majority country, they were less confident about the existence of these entities as compared to scientific entities. In other words, participants' responses reflected the pattern of differential confidence observed in earlier studies (Cui et al., [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref69">6</reflink>]; Davoodi et al., [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref70">8</reflink>]; Shtulman, [<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref71">29</reflink>]). Nevertheless, the strength of this differentiation was more pronounced than it was in Iran (Davoodi et al., [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref72">8</reflink>]), highlighting the fact that, despite the challenges it has faced, Turkish secularization impacts religious beliefs even in a country with a large Muslim majority.</p> <p>Children's beliefs in scientific entities echoed the beliefs of their parents; children were very confident that the scientific entities exist with little to no variability. This is consistent with earlier findings from Iran, China, and the United States (Cui et al., [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref73">6</reflink>]; Davoodi et al., [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref74">8</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref75">7</reflink>]). This lack of variability did not allow any analysis of the relation between children's and their parents judgments of scientific entities, as also observed in China (Cui et al., [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref76">6</reflink>]) and Iran (Davoodi et al., [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref77">8</reflink>]). This ceiling effect is not surprising given the near‐universal consensus among adults regarding the existence of scientific entities and given that children's primary source of knowledge regarding these entities is likely to the consistently confident testimony of adults (see Harris & Koenig, [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref78">16</reflink>]; Payir et al., [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref79">27</reflink>], for further discussion).</p> <p>Children's judgments of religious entities, however, revealed some notable age differences. First, children's confidence in the existence of religious entities increased with age. A plausible explanation for this increase is the regular exposure to religious teaching among older children via the mandatory religious education classes. Note that these classes primarily focus on the phenomena that we investigated in this study, such as God, angels, and life after death (i.e., heaven and hell). Although the majority of children had already been introduced to these concepts before they began taking the mandatory religion classes, as indicated by the degree of familiarity with these entities even among the younger children, there was a sizable minority in this group who had never heard of all or some of the religious entities. None of the older children, who had already started taking those classes, however, were unfamiliar with any of the religious entities. Second, although there was no relation between younger children's judgments of religious entities and that of their parents, with age, children's judgments of these entities aligned with their parents'. It is plausible that once children are formally introduced to religious phenomena at school, this triggers conversations between children and their parents regarding these phenomena and leads to an alignment with parental beliefs. Additional information parents provided regarding the religious activities that their children engage in lend further support to this conclusion: Older children were more likely to hear their parents talk about religious matters and to attend extracurricular religion classes. By implication, Turkish children acquire beliefs about religious phenomena via the testimony they hear both at school and at home, with age determining the level of exposure to this testimony.</p> <p>In line with previous research (Davoodi et al., [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref80">7</reflink>]; Guerrero et al., [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref81">11</reflink>]; Harris et al., [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref82">18</reflink>]), children justified their belief in scientific entities primarily by elaborating on the causal or other properties of the entity that they would typically hear about from others. This is not surprising given that the existence of these phenomena and their properties are taken for granted by a large majority around the world (see Payir et al., [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref83">27</reflink>], for a review). In other words, given the pervasiveness and consistency of the testimony surrounding a particular scientific entity (e.g., germs can cause sickness), it is reasonable for children to reference the content of that testimony as the primary justification for their belief in that entity.</p> <p>Regarding Turkish children's justifications for religious entities, we had entertained two possibilities, based on the findings of Davoodi et al. ([<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref84">7</reflink>]). We anticipated that Turkish children might refer primarily to the content of testimony they are likely to hear (e.g., "Good people go to heaven."), as Iranian children did, given that comparable testimony regarding the existence of these religious entities is also widespread in Türkiye. Alternatively, we anticipated that exposure to pervasive public discourse highlighting the fault line between the "religious" and "non‐religious" might sensitize Turkish children to the source of the testimony they hear, and not just the testimony itself. Our findings supported the latter possibility; children—both younger and older—primarily referred to the source of their belief when justifying why religious entities exist and this pattern became stronger with age. Thus, having encountered the contested nature of religious versus secular viewpoints, Turkish children may have felt the need to track and underline the source of their belief, as did the Protestant Chinese children studied by Davoodi et al. ([<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref85">7</reflink>]). Importantly, the parallel pattern of justification displayed by Turkish children and by Chistian children in China shows that membership of a minority religious community is not essential for such a pattern to emerge.</p> <p>It is also possible that the testimony Turkish children typically receive is often source and identity oriented (e.g., "In the Koran, it says that we go to heaven after we die"; "We believe in God, because we are Muslim"), rather than simply content‐oriented (e.g., "Good people go to heaven after they die"; "God created us in his own image"). There are two reasons to suspect such a pattern given the special context of Türkiye. First, as discussed earlier, religion has been an influential part of Turkish identity (Göle, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref86">10</reflink>]; Keyman, [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref87">21</reflink>]), especially following the military coup in 1980, which imposed the "Turkish‐Islamic" synthesis as the official national identity (Hemmati, [<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref88">19</reflink>]; Kandiyoti & Emanet, [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref89">20</reflink>]). Thus, although the role of religion in private and in public life diminished due to secularization, being Muslim remained an important marker of Turkish identity. Supporting this conclusion, although a large majority identifies with Islam in Türkiye, the percentage who actually practice Islam and consider themselves to be religious is significantly smaller, as discussed earlier and as reflected in our sample. Second, the polarization across the religious‐secular fault line in Türkiye likely pushed the testimony regarding religious beliefs to be more identity‐ and source‐oriented, given the pervasiveness of divisive public discourse in polarized countries (Somer et al., [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref90">32</reflink>]; Van Bavel & Pereira, [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref91">33</reflink>]).</p> <p>It is also worth noting that the evidential markers, which are used to transmit secondhand information in Turkish (Aksu‐Koç, [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref92">2</reflink>]; Aksu‐Koç et al., [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref93">3</reflink>]), might subtly direct Turkish speakers to express and pick up on sources when discussing their belief in religious entities. Indeed, it is plausible that parents use evidential markers frequently, especially when they refer to these entities in religious narratives presented as real stories that once took place (Payir & Harris, [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref94">28</reflink>]). However, any tendency of parents to use the evidentials is unlikely to fully explain the high percentage of source justifications in the domain of religion in our study, because the inclusion of the evidentials was neither sufficient nor necessary for a justification to be coded as source. Lastly, an evidentiality hypothesis cannot explain why the Christian Chinese children, studied by Davoodi et al. ([<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref95">7</reflink>]), also produced higher number of source justifications for religious entities than they did for scientific entities, given that Mandarin does not involve obligatory evidential markers (Ma, [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref96">23</reflink>]). Nevertheless, more research is needed to better understand the pattern of source justifications provided by Turkish children and to ensure the generalizability of the current results.</p> <hd id="AN0180986883-22">Limitations</hd> <p>One obvious limitation of our study is that it does not include information regarding how parents justify their belief in invisible phenomena. As mentioned earlier, this study was part of a larger project focusing on the role of parental testimony in the formation of children's developing beliefs in the domain of science and religion. Parents were asked to fill out a lengthy survey for the entire project, so we did not want to overburden them with the additional task of justifying their beliefs. Future studies including justifications from parents would deepen our understanding of transmission of beliefs via testimony. Another limitation of our study is its homogeneity regarding parents' level of education. The majority of parents participated in our study had received a college education. Future studies focusing on religious belief development in polarized countries would ideally include a more diverse samples in terms of education. Lastly, future research would examine if evidential markers are more frequent in conversations about religious entities than they are in conversations about scientific entities.</p> <hd id="AN0180986883-23">CONCLUSION</hd> <p>The current study extends research examining children's conceptualization of invisible scientific and religious phenomena in significant ways. First, it replicates previous findings showing that children and adults have more confidence in the existence of scientific as compared to religious invisible phenomena (Harris et al., [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref97">18</reflink>]; Shtulman, [<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref98">29</reflink>]). Second, it adds to earlier evidence that this pattern is not unique to Western communities (Cui et al., [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref99">6</reflink>]; Davoodi et al., [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref100">7</reflink>]). Third, by establishing a correspondence between children's beliefs and the beliefs of their parents, it strengthens the claim that adult testimony plays a significant role in children's learning about invisible phenomena (McLoughlin et al., [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref101">25</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref102">24</reflink>]). Finally, and most importantly, by providing evidence from a Muslim‐majority, yet partially secular, country with a long‐standing tension between the religious and secular, it provides initial evidence of how social conflict can mold the type of testimony children typically receive and the ways in which they justify their religious beliefs.</p> <hd id="AN0180986883-24">ACKNOWLEDGMENTS</hd> <p>We are grateful to the parents and children who participated in this project. We also would like to thank Begüm Köseler Özen, R. Pınar Karan, Ayşe Nur Asyalı, Ceren Barış, and Eda Şahin for their help with the transcription and adaptation of study materials, and M. Bora Gerin for his help with coding children's justifications. This research was supported by John Templeton Foundation grant #59820 to Kathleen Corriveau and Paul L. Harris. Gaye Soley is funded by the Serra Hunter Programme, Generalitat de Catalunya.</p> <hd id="AN0180986883-25">DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT</hd> <p>Data, code, and materials for this research are available at the following URL: https://osf.io/sem3a/. The analyses presented here were not preregistered.</p> <p>GRAPH: Figure S1.</p> <ref id="AN0180986883-26"> <title> REFERENCES </title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" idref="ref52" type="bt">1</bibl> <bibtext> Adler, N. E., Epel, E. S., Castellazzo, G., & Ickovics, J. R. (2000). Relationship of subjective and objective social status with psychological and physiological functioning: Preliminary data in healthy, White women. Health Psychology, 19 (6), 586 – 592. https://doi.org/10.1037//0278‐6133.19.6.586</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib2" idref="ref55" type="bt">2</bibl> <bibtext> Aksu‐Koç, A. (1988). The acquisition of aspect and modality. 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  Data: Religious Polarization and Justification of Belief in Invisible Scientific versus Religious Entities
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Ayse+Payir%22">Ayse Payir</searchLink> (ORCID <externalLink term="https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1210-2082">0000-0003-1210-2082</externalLink>)<br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Gaye+Soley%22">Gaye Soley</searchLink> (ORCID <externalLink term="https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6333-6017">0000-0002-6333-6017</externalLink>)<br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Oya+Serbest%22">Oya Serbest</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Kathleen+H%2E+Corriveau%22">Kathleen H. Corriveau</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Paul+L%2E+Harris%22">Paul L. Harris</searchLink> (ORCID <externalLink term="https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4907-0539">0000-0003-4907-0539</externalLink>)
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22Child+Development%22"><i>Child Development</i></searchLink>. 2024 95(5):1723-1738.
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  Data: Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
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  Data: Y
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  Label: Page Count
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  Data: 16
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  Label: Publication Date
  Group: Date
  Data: 2024
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  Data: Journal Articles<br />Reports - Research
– Name: Subject
  Label: Descriptors
  Group: Su
  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Religious+Factors%22">Religious Factors</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Conflict%22">Conflict</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Beliefs%22">Beliefs</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Psychological+Patterns%22">Psychological Patterns</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Barriers%22">Barriers</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Visual+Environment%22">Visual Environment</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Confidence+Testing%22">Confidence Testing</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Children%22">Children</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Role+of+Religion%22">Role of Religion</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Scientific+Concepts%22">Scientific Concepts</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Foreign+Countries%22">Foreign Countries</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Parents%22">Parents</searchLink>
– Name: Subject
  Label: Geographic Terms
  Group: Su
  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Turkey%22">Turkey</searchLink>
– Name: DOI
  Label: DOI
  Group: ID
  Data: 10.1111/cdev.14118
– Name: ISSN
  Label: ISSN
  Group: ISSN
  Data: 0009-3920<br />1467-8624
– Name: Abstract
  Label: Abstract
  Group: Ab
  Data: Children and adults express greater confidence in the existence of invisible scientific as compared to invisible religious entities. To further examine this differential confidence, 5- to 11-year-old Turkish children and their parents (N = 174, 122 females) from various regions in Türkiye, a country with an ongoing tension between secularism and religion, were tested in 2021 for their belief in invisible entities. Participants expressed more confidence in the existence of scientific than religious entities. For scientific entities, children justified their belief primarily by elaborating on the properties of the entity, rather than referring to the testimonial source of their judgment. This pattern was reversed for religious entities, arguably, highlighting the role of polarization in shaping the testimony children typically hear.
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  Data: https://osf.io/sem3a
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  Data: 2024
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  Label: Accession Number
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  Data: EJ1449411
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        Value: 10.1111/cdev.14118
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        PageCount: 16
        StartPage: 1723
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      – SubjectFull: Religious Factors
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Conflict
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      – SubjectFull: Beliefs
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      – SubjectFull: Role of Religion
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      – SubjectFull: Parents
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      – SubjectFull: Turkey
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      – TitleFull: Religious Polarization and Justification of Belief in Invisible Scientific versus Religious Entities
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