The Effect of Religion on the Perception of Reality

Religious indoctrination has an impact on children's perception of reality.

A team of U.S. researchers have conducted a study on the effect of religious indoctrination during childhood. effect of religious indoctrination during childhood, a crucial stage in theThe study was carried out by a team of American researchers 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 person.

Religion and education

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

For this purpose, children between 5 and 6 years of age were selected and divided into 4 groups, according to their degree of exposure to religious education:

1- Minors attending a public school and who do not attend catechesis.

2- Children attending a public public school and who attend catechesis.

3- Minors who attend a religious religious school and who do not attend catechesis.

4- Minors who attend a religious religious school and who attend catechesis.

Three stories were told to all the children in these four groups. One of them did not contain any magical elements and was realistic. realisticthe second was a religious religious variant the second was a religious variant in which miracles were explained, and the third was another variant containing fantastic elements. fantastic elements elements, but which were not explained by divine intervention.

The great majority of children 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, to be fictitious. In the rest of the groups, however, there was a tendency to consider the religious story as real. Belief in the fantasy story, although relatively low in all four groups, increased in proportion to exposure to the religious story, increased in proportion to exposure to religious education, reaching its highest peak (48% of the children in the group) in those children who attended a religious school and also the parish. The same was true for belief in religious history, although its variability among 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. psychologically affects children, making them more gullible to any unfounded assumption. to any unsubstantiated assumption. However, it should be noted that the study is based on self-reporting, information provided verbally by the children. 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 result in an inadequate worldview is not unreasonable.

There is now some evidence that people with strong religious or paranormal beliefs are also prone to commit cognitive biases, such as mistaking metaphors for reality or believing that every process is intentional and leads to a goal, even if it is not carried out by an agent (that a tree loses leaves, for example).