From Prayer to Practice: Children's Religious Understanding and Outgroup Prosocial Behaviours

In a religiously diverse world, understanding how young children perceive and interact with peers from other religious groups is pivotal for promoting harmony from an early age. The study examines how children’s understanding of an outgroup religion is associated with their prosocial behaviours towards children from that religion. Conducted with 210 children aged 3 to 6 years (mean = 4.19 years; 50.7% boys) from the majority religion (Catholic) in state schools in Malta, we assessed children’s religious understanding through identification of ingroup religious symbols, and prayer. Additionally, we measured children’s outgroup (i.e. Muslim) religious understanding through outgroup prayer. Children’s prosocial behaviours were assessed through their costly giving of stickers to outgroup children. Findings indicate that outgroup religious understanding moderated the link between children’s religious understanding and outgroup giving. Specifically, outgroup religious understanding dampened the association between ingroup religious understanding and outgroup giving for children with higher ingroup religious understanding. Implications of children’s outgroup religious understanding on prosocial behaviours are discussed.