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Children's Beliefs In Culturally Disseminated Figures

EnolaGaia

EnolaGaia

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I found this preliminary study from Australia interesting. It concerned children's ratings of "reality" for a variety of familiar cultural figures. These ratings were compared against a small survey of adults. If nothing else, it demonstrated children gave more credence to certain cultural figures (Santa; Tooth Fairy) if there were indirect evidence (i.e., gifts) suggesting those figures' tangible presence and / or actions.

I wonder whether further such research might shed light on the development and / or maintenance of personal beliefs in Fortean subjects.

Is Santa Real? Examining Children’s Beliefs in Cultural Figures From the Tooth Fairy to SpongeBob

Young children understand dinosaurs and The Wiggles are (or were!) real, and that fictional characters like Peter Pan and Spongebob are not real — but cultural figures like Santa or the Tooth Fairy occupy an ambiguous place in a child’s pantheon, suggests a study published June 17, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Rohan Kapitány from Keele University, and colleagues.

Children as young as three are capable of understanding the difference between “real” and “non-real.” However, there’s little research into how children evaluate different types of non-real people or figures relative to one another, as well as in comparison to real people.

In order to better understand children’s beliefs, Kapitány and colleagues asked 176 Australian children two to eleven years old to rate how real they considered thirteen different figures ... The authors hypothesized that their results might show a hierarchy between real and unreal, with some unreal figures perceived as more real by children depending on indirect evidence or cultural rituals at play — like setting out milk and cookies for Santa that have “vanished” by Christmas morning. For comparison, they also assessed 56 adults. ...

The data suggested the majority of children conceptualized the thirteen figures into four groups, based on score endorsements: ranked most highly as “real” were figures like dinosaurs and The Wiggles (with a score of 7 points); the next-highest score went to cultural figures like Santa and the Tooth Fairy (6 points), followed by ambiguous figures like aliens, dragons, and ghosts (4 points) and fictional characters like Peter Pan, Spongebob, and Elsa (4 points). In comparison, adults (and older children, from seven years up) tended to group figures into three groups: real, not-real, and ambiguous (ghosts and aliens).

Although this study is limited in that there was no standard definition of “real” provided to the participants ... , the relatively high belief in cultural figures among younger children remains notable. The authors plan future work to understand how ritual participation and other factors lead children to understand what is real (or not real) in their world, particularly when children might have no direct relevant experience. ...
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FULL STORY (With More Detailed Data): https://scitechdaily.com/is-santa-r...al-figures-from-the-tooth-fairy-to-spongebob/
 
I am not really sure what the great reveal is here. They are not real but the children are told they are. However they have never seen them (at least not actually climbing down chimneys in the case of Santa) so they go in a separate category.
 
Yeah looking at those scatter graphs you wonder whether there's a lot of semantics involved as well that the results don't reflect. I mean dinosaurs are 'real' but they're definitely not real now because they don't exist at all any more. And spongebob is real because he's a real character on the television, he's not a made up thing like spingebib. Look at the amount of dots claiming that Princess Elsa's real. Don't tell me a small child literally thinks she could walk in the room as a cartoon?? I'm no authority on small children but even so.
 
I like the graphs :)
 
Didn't we have a thread on people who saw Santa Claus in real life, and not some fat bloke dressed up for Christmas at the local shopping centre either? Feels weird to be talking about Santa in this hot weather.
 
bugmum said:
No, but there are real people who dress up as Princess Elsa - for parties and fairs and stuff - so that probably colours the children's perception of her reality.
Click to expand...

I know one! She is a hospital porter and part-time singer who does the Elsa act, fully costumed, for poorly children.
All for love. She is a kind person.
 
"Young children understand dinosaurs and The Wiggles are (or were!) real"

Is that the Wiggles that have taken unnecessary amounts of LSD and advocate joining a Fruit Salad cult ?

 
Bad Bungle said:
"Young children understand dinosaurs and The Wiggles are (or were!) real"

Is that the Wiggles that have taken unnecessary amounts of LSD and advocate joining a Fruit Salad cult ?

Click to expand...
I went to a museum in Australia where they had an exhibition about The Wiggles(!) Apparently it was a huge controversy when they got the Lady Wiggle. What stuck in my mind though was at one point they partnered with Steve Irwin. I couldn't help thinking "The Wiggles have outlived Steve"
 
I have spent some time questioning my daughter about the way she sees the world and a couple of interesting things have come up.

For context: the extent of her religious education has been that she has visited an awful lot more churches and temples than the average child (she's now five), she has been told what praying is, and that three of her great-grandparents are 'in Heaven', which was defined rather loosely as 'where people go after they die'. She's also been informed that Jesus and Buddha were both real people who lived long ago, and that many people think that Jesus is God, which, again, was loosely defined as the man (I probably did accidentally say 'man') who made everything. No doubt she has picked up bits and pieces elsewhere, but there has been no religious aspect to her schooling, and none of her friends are regular church attendees.

From that she has inferred the following:

1) That Heaven is a beautiful place, somewhat like Earth (but old-fashioned looking), with buildings and homes, where people speak quietly.
2) That despite having lived in the past, Buddha and Jesus can inhabit churches and temples in spirit in the present day. And, similarly, that they can be in all the different churches and temples as required--although she never specified 'at the same time'.
3) That children must be in heaven before they are born (or rather before they inhabit their mother's tummies) as it's impossible for a
person not to exist and then to exist, though perhaps the idea of them existed before they were created. She is quite firm on this and often asks whether something occurred 'when I was in Heaven' as opposed to 'before I was born'.

And, separately:

4) Ghosts only exist in England and not in Korea, possibly because English people believe in ghosts, but Korean people don't--they're just stories here.

My only conclusion is that she seems quite content to accept the reality of things that she has not seen. Some of this acceptance, I would suggest, comes from the fact that she has seen so many adults attending to matters that would imply the objective reality of God, Santa, and the Tooth Fairy, and the agency of superstitions (that'll be me counting ravens, noting 13s, touching wood etc.). At her age, she places sufficient faith in the judgment of adults to assume that they can't all be wrong.

Much to learn!
 
Its complex, isnt it?

I went to a C of E School and we had bible stories, but they were never contextualised, or given a moral, -they were just stories.

And we sang hymns, -but they were just songs.

The only thing I recall that was `religious/spiritual` (I use the inverted commas meaningfully as it wasnt really conventional) was one easter our Headmaster told us he wasnt giving us a regular easter reading.

Instead he read the sacrifice of Aslan scene from C S Lewis `The Lion, the witch and the Wardrobe`.
 
When I was about 4 I would hear the church bells on Sunday about 4 blocks away and run off to see what was happening. I was welcomed into Sunday school.
When my parents found me they arranged for a friend's older child to take me as they didn't attend as she was Cof E and he R.C.
Anyway whilst going there, I noticed that after Sunday School people were going into the main church and I wanted to know why, so I attached myself to an old lady and sat through that service too till I walked home by myself.
This went on for some time till at the butcher's one day the Minister's wife greeted me and said how much they liked having me .
So that was the end of that.
 
I went to a church youth club for a year without realising it.
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