Department of Psychology and Center for Mind and Brain, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA.
Dev Psychol. 2010 Jan;46(1):78-92. doi: 10.1037/a0016694.
Multiple methods were used to examine children's awareness of connections between emotion and prayer. Four-, 6-, and 8-year-olds and adults (N = 100) predicted whether people would pray when feeling different emotions, explained why characters in different situations decided to pray, and predicted whether characters' emotions would change after praying. Four- and 6-year-olds exclusively judged that positive emotions motivate prayer, whereas 8-year-olds and adults most often predicted that negative emotions would cause people to pray and that praying could improve emotions. There was also a significant increase between 4 and 8 years in explaining prayer as motivated by need for assistance, for thanksgiving, and for conversation, as well as for explaining postprayer emotions in relation to God or prayer. Religious background predicted individual differences in reasoning only for 4-year-olds.
多种方法被用于检验儿童对情绪和祈祷之间关系的认识。四、六、八岁儿童和成年人（N=100）预测当人们感受到不同的情绪时是否会祈祷，解释不同情境下的角色为何决定祈祷，以及预测角色在祈祷后情绪是否会改变。四到六岁的儿童专门判断积极情绪会激发祈祷，而八岁的儿童和成年人最常预测负面情绪会导致人们祈祷，以及祈祷可以改善情绪。在解释祈祷是出于寻求帮助、感恩和交流的动机，以及解释祈祷后的情绪与上帝或祈祷有关方面，四岁到八岁之间也有显著的增长。宗教背景仅能预测四岁儿童在推理方面的个体差异。
