Are we wired to see god in disasters due to cultural superstition?
So, for my last debate I have decided to report on an interesting study in the psychology of superstitious thinking. I was reading an interesting report on a study involving children and their association of natural events with information being communicated to them, with and without prior explanation that an invisible friend called Alice would help them in an unspecified way when they selected a wrong box.
What they found was that after giving them this information, children aged 7 to 9 would interpret natual occurrances such as a picture dropping or lights flickering as communication to them from Alice. Children 6 years and younger may have assigned these events to Alice but were unable to draw a connection to "Alice" helping them with the boxes. This suggests that age 7 seems to be when children gain a certain ability to think in supernatural terms, probably due to their ability to think in terms of someone else's thoughts.
So everyone, this is my last debate since I'm leaving today. It was a fun year of debating but I feel it's time to move on.
