We’ve made a list and we’re checking it twice: A two-wave longitudinal study of children’s moral behavior during Christmas

Abstract

Introduction: Santa Claus is a morally concerned, omniscient, interventionist supernatural agent. Belief in a ‘real’ Santa emerges in early childhood, is highly contingent upon adult endorsement, and typically ceases in the 7th year. Studying children may yield insights into the development and evolution of religious cognition. We expect that belief and exposure to cultural rituals will predict children's moral behavior during the Xmas period. Methods: We collected longitudinal data from parents (on Prolific) regarding their child’s belief in Santa, cultural practices and symbols, Santa’s moral concerns, and child prosocial behavior in the preceding week both before the Xmas period (T1: 25 November), and for the apex of the Xmas festival (T2: 26 December; N = 97). Results: Preliminary results suggest that disobedience/aggression did not change over the Xmas period, but that prompted prosociality increased, and unprompted prosociality decreased. The change was not predicted by belief in Santa, ritual salience, Xmas-relevant CREDs, or age. Discussion: Our real-world data among children have implications for the generalizability, learnability, and evolvability of the ‘Big Gods’ hypothesis.