Adolescents' sensitivity to children's supernatural thinking: A preparation for parenthood?

Young children often use magical explanations to account for ordinary phenomena (e.g., "The sun's not out today because it is mad"). We labeled these explanations supernatural thinking. Previous research reports that supernatural thinking attributed to preschool-age children evokes both positive affect and perceptions of helplessness from both adults and older (14-17 years old) but not younger (10-13 years old) adolescents. In this study, we asked if cues of cognitive immaturity are more influential in affecting adolescents' judgments of children than physical cues (faces).

245 adolescents aged between 10 and 17 rated pairs of children who physically and/or cognitively resembled either a 4- to 7-year-old or an 8- to 10-year-old child in three between-subject conditions (Consistent, Inconsistent, Faces-Only) for 14 traits classified into four trait dimensions (Positive Affect, Negative Affect, Intelligence, Helplessness).

For both younger and older adolescents, cognitive cues had a greater influence on judgments than facial cues. However, only the older adolescents demonstrated a positive bias for children expressing immature supernatural thinking.

Adopting an evolutionary developmental perspective, we interpreted this outcome in late (but not early) adolescence as preparation for potential parenthood.