The Effect Of Religion On The Perception Of Reality
A team of American researchers have carried out a study on the effect of religious indoctrination during childhood a crucial stage in terms of the way of thinking and the affirmation of one’s own identity that will later define the adult.
The research was aimed at obtaining evidence about a possible openness to any type of beliefs on the part of boys and girls who spend more time in educational institutions linked to religious education: that is, if these minors are more likely to accept stories as valid. mystical or fantastic that are not directly related to the worldview beliefs of their religion.
For this, children between 5 and 6 years old were selected and divided into 4 groups, according to their degree of exposure to religious education:
1- Minors who go to a public school and? they do not attend catechism
2- Minors who go to a public school and? attend catechism
3- Minors who go to a religious school and? They do not attend catechism
4- Minors who go to a religious school and? attend catechism
Three stories were told to all the boys and girls in these 4 groups. One of them did not contain any magical elements and was realistic the second was a religious variant in which the performance of miracles was explained, and the third was another variant that contained fantastic elements but that were not explained by divine intervention.
The vast majority of minors in group 1 considered the protagonist of the realistic story to be real and showed a clear tendency to consider the protagonists of the other two variants, the fantastic and the religious, as fictitious. In the rest of the groups, however, there was a tendency to consider religious history as real. Belief in fantastic history, despite being relatively low in the four groups, increased in proportion to exposure to religious education, reaching its maximum limit (48% of the minors in the group) in those boys and girls who attended a religious school and also the parish. The same thing happened with belief in religious history, although its variability between groups 2, 3 and 4 was lower as it was already close to 100% in group 2.
Do we allow ourselves to be influenced by religious beliefs?
The conclusion that the research seems to lead to is that indoctrination linked to religion has a psychological impact on children, making them more gullible against any unfounded assumption. However, it should be noted that the study is based on self-report, information provided verbally by minors. Therefore, it is not known to what extent children internalize these beliefs and begin to perceive the world and act accordingly. However, the hypothesis that a degree of verbalized and conscious acceptance of all types of unfounded beliefs can subconsciously result in an inadequate worldview is not far-fetched.
There is currently some evidence that people with strong religious or paranormal beliefs are also prone to committing cognitive biases, such as confusing metaphors with reality or believing that every process is intentional and leads to a goal, even if it is not carried out by an agent. (a tree losing leaves, for example).
