Conflicting Thoughts about Death

Most research on children's conception of death has probed their understanding of its biological aspects: its inevitability, irreversibility and terminal impact. Yet many adults subscribe to a religious conception implying that death marks the beginning of a new life. Two recent empirical studies confirm that in the course of development, children supplement their biological conception of death with this religious conception. Depending on which of those two conceptions is primed, children as well as adults arrive at mutually inconsistent conclusions about whether death arrests various bodily and mental processes. The coexistence of these two conceptions within the same individual raises questions about the extent to which children and adults recognize that inconsistency and how they respond when it is brought to their attention. Copyright (C) 2011 S. Karger AG, Basel