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Children and adults from the us (Study 1) and China (Study 2) heard about people who died in two types of narrative contexts - medical and religious - and judged whether their psychological and biological capacities cease or persist after death. Most 5- to 6-year-olds reported that all capacities would cease. In the us, but not China, there was an increase in persistence judgments at 7-8 years, which decreased thereafter, us children's persistence judgments were influenced by narrative context - occurring more often for religious narratives - and such judgments were made especially for psychological capacities. When participants were simply asked what happens to people following death, in both countries there were age-graded increases in references to burial, religious ritual, and the supernatural. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined participants’ (N = 145) beliefs in the power of thought by comparing their judgments about whether desires would be fulfilled through prayer or through another petitionary activity – wishing. Three groups of adults (theists, agnostics, and atheists) read scenarios in which a protagonist desires to assist another person and either ‘wishes’ or ‘prays to God’ for their desires to be fulfilled. Requests varied by domain (psychological, biological, physical outcomes) and by plausibility (ordinarily plausible versus impossible outcomes). Participants reported whether each request would be fulfilled. Overall, participants judged that requests for plausible phenomena would be fulfilled more often than requests for impossible phenomena. Atheists were similar to theists and agnostics in belief that wishes would be fulfilled, perhaps suggesting that all groups appealed somewhat to metaphysical causality. However, agnostics, and especially atheists, were less likely than theists to report that prayers would be fulfilled. Engagement in prayer activities was a particularly strong predictor of participants’ belief in the power of prayer but was unrelated to their belief in the power of wishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]