Three studies examined the co-existence of natural and supernatural explanations for illness and disease transmission, from a developmental perspective. The participants (5-, 7-, 11-, and 15-year-olds and adults; N = 366) were drawn from 2 Sesotho-speaking South African communities, where Western biomedical and traditional healing frameworks were both available. Results indicated that, although...

Individuals attribute more psychological (e.g., forget) than biological (e.g., eat) or physical (e.g., be touched) properties to supernatural beings (Shtulman, 2008). It is unclear how those domains each contribute to an overall conception of a supernatural being (e.g., God). Undergraduate students (N = 341) responded to nine questions representing the three domains or factors (psychological, b...

In two studies undergraduates' understanding of extraordinary capabilities was investigated using religious and secular contexts. Six stories assessed participants’ endorsement of anthropomorphic language to describe attention, physical power, perception, and presence of three agents: God, a human, and Qwore, an agent with the same powers as God. Participants attributed human-like limitations t...

Recent research shows that even preschoolers are skeptical; they frequently reject claims from other people when the claims conflict with their own perceptions and concepts. Yet, despite their skepticism, both children and adults come to believe in a variety of phenomena that defy their first-hand perceptions and intuitive conceptions of the world. In this review, we explore how children and ad...

The present paper is designed to explore the belief system prevailing in a rural community of the Punjab, Pakistan. In particular, prevalence of beliefs regarding superstitions, dreams and shrines are studied along with other supernatural aspects such as black magic, taweez and ghosts. Data are taken from a probability sample survey conducted in the village. The survey covered various aspects o...

Though religion has been shown to have generally positive effects on normative 'prosocial' behavior, recent laboratory research suggests that these effects may be driven primarily by supernatural punishment. Supernatural benevolence, on the other hand, may actually be associated with less prosocial behavior. Here, we investigate these effects at the societal level, showing that the proportion o...

In this transcultural study of schizophrenic delusions among patients in Seoul, Shanghai and Taipei, we discovered that both the frequency and content of delusions differed among the three groups; and that these differences could perhaps be explained by varying sociocultural and political situations. Delusional themes that are sensitive to sociocultural or political situations include guilt, lo...