Visual image of God/gods during early childhood.

Abstract

This study examined whether Japanese children have a different visual image of God/gods than children from Western countries, who have an image of an old White man. Study 1 comprised 183, 4-7-year-old Japanese children (93 girls), who had to choose a face that looked like God/gods from among pictures of faces that differed on age (e.g., young Asian man vs. old Asian man), race (e.g., White woman vs. Black woman vs. Asian woman), or gender (e.g., Asian man vs. Asian woman). Children's responses were relatively biased toward old or White faces, but only boys were weakly biased toward male faces. Study 2 confirmed that children did not have a strong gender bias. Japanese children conceptualise God/gods as old or White.