Research | Ayse

The Coexistence of Scientific and Religious Thinking

Although scientific and religious thinking are typically portrayed as contradictory, there is growing evidence that individuals entertain both natural and supernatural explanations when thinking about natural phenomena. How such coexistence thinking emerges and progresses from childhood to adulthood, however, is largely unknown. To address this significant gap, I study how children and adults in two distinct cultures (i.e., Turkey and the USA) contemplate seemingly contradictory ideas regarding life after death, the beginning of life, the causes of illness, and the causes of natural disasters.

The ability to think outside the here and now is a fascinating aspect of the human mind. Even in the preschool years, children can put current reality aside and speculate about hypothetical and counterfactual possibilities. My research focuses on the real-life implications of this ability and how it is shaped by cultural input.

Some of the questions I have explored are:

How do children imagine alternatives to reality?
How do these alternatives influence emotional experience and moral judgments?
How do cultural factors determine the boundaries of these alternatives?
How do children and adults reason about the the phenomena that they cannot experience firsthand,

such as religious and scientific entities and claims?

What are the origins of the perceived conflict between science and religion?
How do seemingly contradictory scientific and religious explanations develop from childhood to adulthood?

Please scroll down to check my previous and ongoing projects.

Developing Belief Network

I am involved with Developing Belief Network, "An international, cross-cultural, collaborative research network

exploring the development and diversity of cognition." The goal of our network is to explore the following research questions:

How do children around the world acquire religious and supernatural concepts such as god(s), reincarnation, or evil eye?
How do they learn to perform rituals such as praying, communicating with ancestors, or meditation?
How do they form a religious identity?

Please see Developing Belief Network website for more details and updates.

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Reasoning about What Exists and What is Possible

Much of what we know in the domain of science and religion—about evolution, God, or the afterlife—is based on what others tell us, rather than our firsthand experience (Harris, 2012). With a cross-cultural team, I investigate how children and adults represent and evaluate these hard-to-observe phenomena and how culture feeds into this process.

Please also see the websites of Social Learning Lab (PI: Kathleen Corriveau) and Paul L. Harris for related research.

Related papers:

Payir, A. & Harris, P. L. (in press). Children’s ideas about stories and about reality. In A. James, F. Lavocat, & A. Kubo (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Fiction and Belief. New York: Routledge.

Payir, A., Corriveau, K., & Harris, P. L. (2023). Children’s beliefs in invisible causal agents – both religious and scientific. Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 65. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.acdb.2023.05.003

Mcloughlin, N., Cui, K., Davoodi, T., Payir, A., Clegg, J., Harris, P L.., & Corriveau, K. (2023). Expressions of uncertainty in invisible scientific and religious phenomena during naturalistic conversation. Cognition, 237. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105474

Davoodi, T., Jamshidi, M., Payir, A., Cui, K., Harris, P. L., Corriveau, K. (2022). Miraculous, magical, or mundane? The development of beliefs about stories with divine, magical, or realistic causation. Memory & Cognition, 51, 695 -707. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-021-01270-2

Payir, A., Heiphetz, L., Harris, P., & Corriveau, K. (2022). What could have been done? Counterfactual alternatives to negative outcomes by religious and secular children. Developmental Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001294

Payir, A., Mcloughlin, N., Cui, K.Y., Davoodi, T., Clegg, J., Harris, P., & Corriveau, K. (2021). Children’s ideas about what can really happen: The impact of age and religious background. Cognitive Science.

https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13054

Payir, A., Davoodi, T., Cui, Y.K., Clegg, J., Harris, P., & Corriveau, K. (2020). Are high levels of religiosity inconsistent with a high valuation of science? Evidence from the United States, China and Iran. International Journal of Psychology. doi: 10.1002/ijop.12701

Davoodi, T., Cui, K. Y., Clegg, J. M., Yan, F. E., Payir, A., Harris, P. L., & Corriveau, K. H. (2020). Epistemic justifications for belief in the unobservable: The impact of minority status. Cognition. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104273

Payir, A., Davoodi, T., Jamshidi, S. M., Harris, P., & Corriveau, K. (2018). Coexisting religious and scientific beliefs among Iranian parents. Peace & Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 24(2), 240-244. doi: 10.1037/pac0000335

Davoodi, T., Sianaki, M. J., Abedi, F., Payir, A., Cui, K. Y., Harris, P. L., & Corriveau, K. H. (2018). Beliefs about religious and scientific entities among parents and children in Iran. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10(7), 847-855. doi: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1948550618806057

McLoughlin, N., Cui, Y.K., Davoodi, T., Payir, A., Clegg, J. M., Harris, P.L., & Corriveau, K. (in revision). Parents signal differential confidence in unobservable scientific and religious phenomena during conversation with their children.

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Moralizing God Concepts

In this project, I explored how children and adults perceive God and how this perception gives rise to expectations regarding God’s response to moral transgressions.

Please also see Social and Moral Cognition Lab (PI: Larisa Heiphetz) at Columbia University for similar research.

Related papers:

Lee, Y., Payir, A., & Heiphetz, L. (2023). Benevolent God concepts and past kind behaviors induce generosity toward outgroups. Social Cognition, 41(4), 321-339. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2023.41.4.321

Payir, A., Heiphetz, L. (2022). Children’s and adults’ attribution of moral judgments to human and supernatural agents. Journal of Cognition and Development, 23(4), 524-544. https://doi.org/10.1080/15248372.2022.2061975

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Development of Counterfactual Thinking

In a series of studies, I explored the origins of adult-like counterfactual thinking by studying the age-related differences in counterfactual-based emotions and moral judgments from age 6 to 12.

Related papers:

Payir, A., & Guttentag, R. (2019). Counterfactual thinking and age differences in judgments of regret and blame. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 183, 261-275. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2019.02.007

Payir, A., & Guttentag, R. (2016). “It could have been worse”: The development of a counterfactual consoling strategy. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 148, 119-130. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2016.04.001

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Developing Gratitude

Developing Gratitude in Children and Adolescents

What are the cross-cultural differences in the development and expression of gratitude? What is the relation between gratitude and materialism? To explore questions like these, we asked children and adolescents from 7 different countries about their wishes and what they would do for someone who gave them that wish.

Please see the details of the Developing Gratitude Project (PI: Jonathan R. Tudge) here and see the related book published in 2018 here.

Related papers:

*Indicates equal contribution

*Freitas, L. B. L., *Palhares, F., *Cao, H., *Liang, Y., *Zhou, N., *Mokrova, I. L, *Lee, S., *Payir, A., *Kiang, L., *Mendonça, S. E., *Merçon-Vargas, E. A., *O’Brien, L., & Tudge, J. R. H. (in press). How WEIRD is the expression of children’s gratitude in the United States? Cross-cultural comparisons. Developmental Psychology.

Liang, Y., Tudge, J. R., Mokrova, I. L., Freitas, L. B., Merçon-Vargas, E. A., Mendonça, S. E., O’Brian, L., Kiang, L., Payir, A., Cao, H. & Zhou, N. (2019). Measuring parents’ developmental goals for their children: Updating Kağitçibaşi’s approach to autonomy-relatedness in the United States and China. Current Psychology, 1-10. doi: 10.1007/s12144-019-00421-8

Payir, A., & Zeytinoglu, S. (2017). Children’s and adolescents’ expression of gratitude across societies: Findings from Turkey. Journal of Cross-Cultural Research, 52(1), 117-134. doi: 10.1177/1069397117736733

Mendonca, S., Merçon-Vargas, E., Payir, A., O'Brien, L., & Tudge, J. (2018). The development of gratitude in seven societies: Cross-cultural highlights. Journal of Cross-Cultural Research, 52(1). doi: 10.1177/1069397117737245

Kiang, L., Mendonca, S., Liang, Y., Payir, A. , O'Brien, L., Tudge, J., & Freitas, L. (2016). If children won lotteries: Materialism, gratitude, and imaginary windfall spending.Young Consumers, 17(4), 404-418. doi: 10.1108/YC-07-2016-00614

Payir, A., Mendonça, S., Palhares, F., Liang, Y., Merçon-Vargas, E., Freitas, L., & Tudge, J. (2017). Cross-cultural variations in the development of gratitude. In J. Tudge & L. Freitas (Eds.), Developing gratitude in children and adolescents (pp. 111-134). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Kiang, L., Merçon-Vargas, E., Payir, A., & O’Brien, L. (2017). The development of gratitude and its relation to spending preferences and materialism.In J. Tudge & L. Freitas (Eds.), Developing gratitude in children and adolescents. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.