Stay Away, Santa: Children's Beliefs about the Impact of COVID-19 on Real and Fictional Beings

Autor/inn/en	Sullivan, Jessica; Tillman, Katharine; Shtulman, Andrew
Titel	Stay Away, Santa: Children's Beliefs about the Impact of COVID-19 on Real and Fictional Beings
Quelle	In: Developmental Psychology, 59 (2023) 5, S.940-952 (13 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Sullivan, Jessica)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0012-1649
DOI	10.1037/dev0001534
Schlagwörter	Childrens Attitudes; Beliefs; COVID-19; Pandemics; Communicable Diseases; Health Behavior; Imagination; Prevention; Risk; Age Differences; Public Health + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Belief; Glaube; Contagious disease; Contagious diseases; Communicable disease; Infektionskrankheit; Health behaviour; Gesundheitsverhalten; Prävention; Vorbeugung; Risiko; Age; Difference; Age difference; Altersunterschied; Gesundheitswesen
Abstract	The COVID-19 pandemic has forced children to reckon with the causal relations underlying disease transmission. What are children's theories of how COVID-19 is transmitted? And how do they understand the relation between COVID-19 susceptibility and the need for disease-mitigating behavior? We asked these questions in the context of children's beliefs about supernatural beings, like Santa and the Tooth Fairy. Because these beings cannot be observed, children's beliefs about the impact of COVID-19 on them must be based on their underlying theories of disease transmission and prevention rather than on experience. In the summer of 2020, N = 218 U.S. children between the ages of 3 and 10 years (M = 81.2 months) were asked to rate supernatural beings' susceptibility to COVID-19, and the extent to which these beings should engage in disease-mitigating behaviors, such as social distancing and mask wearing. Many children believed supernatural beings were susceptible to COVID-19. However, children rated the need for supernatural beings to engage in disease-mitigating behaviors as higher than the beings' disease susceptibility, indicating a disconnect between their conceptions of the causal relations between disease-mitigating behavior and disease prevention. Children's belief that a particular supernatural being could be impacted by COVID-19 was best predicted by the number of human-like properties they attributed to it, regardless of the child's age. Together, these findings suggest that although young children fail to appreciate specific pathways of disease transmission, they nonetheless understand disease as a bodily affliction, even for beings whose bodies have never been observed. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01