PLOS ONE, is one of the first studies to look at how children evaluate different types of non-real people or figures relative to one another, as well as in comparison to real people.“What we show is that children tend to have a nuanced understanding of reality, more so than many expect, and we show it across a ‘pantheon’ of figures who naturally vary in their degree of ‘reality’ and cultural support.
We argue that rituals are a particularly potent signal for kids when it comes to accepting things like Santa Claus as real,” write the authors.For the study, the researchers asked 176 Australian children (ages 2 to 11) to rate how real they considered thirteen different figures (ranging from real people like The Wiggles to more ambiguous.
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