The effect of religion on the perception of reality

A team of American researchers have carried out A study about him effect of religious indoctrination during childhood, a crucial stage in regard to the way of thinking and the affirmation of the own identity that will later define the adult person.

Religion and education

The research was aimed at obtaining evidence about a possible openness to any type of beliefs on the part of children and girls who spend more time in educational institutions linked to religious education: that is, if these minors are more prone to accept as valid mystical or fantastic stories that are not directly related to the beliefs and worldviews of their own religion.

To do this, minors 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 So what they do not attend catechesis.

2- Minors who go to a public school So what attend catechesis.

3- Minors who go to a religious school So what they do not attend catechesis.

4- Minors who go to a religious school So what attend catechesis.

All the boys and girls in these 4 groups were told three stories. One of them did not contain any magic 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 they were not explained by divine intervention.

The vast majority of the 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. In the rest of the groups, however, there was a tendency to consider religious history as real. The belief in fantasy history, despite being relatively low in all 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 happened with the belief in religious history, although its variability between groups 2, 3 and 4 was lower, being already close to 100% in group 2.

Are we influenced by religious beliefs?

The conclusion the research seems to lead to is that indoctrination linked to religion has psychological repercussions on children making them more gullible to any unsubstantiated assumption. However, it should be noted that the study is based on self-report, information provided verbally by the 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 kinds of Unfounded beliefs may subconsciously impact an inadequate worldview is not crazy.

There are 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 an objective, even if it is not carried out by an agent (that a tree loses its leaves, for example).