Intuitive conceptions of dead agents' minds: The natural foundations of afterlife beliefs

Little is known about how the minds of dead agents are represented. In Study 1, adult participants with different types of explicit afterlife beliefs were asked in an implicit interview task whether various psychological state types (psychobiological, perceptual, emotional, desire, and epistemic states), as well as pure biological imperatives (e.g., need to eat), continue after death. The results suggest that, regardless of one's explicit reports about personal consciousness after death, those who believe in some form of life after death (and, to a certain extent, even those who do not) implicitly represent dead agents' minds in the same way: psychobiological and perceptual states cease while emotional, desire, and epistemic states continue. The findings are interpreted according to simulation constraints---because it is epistemologically impossible to know what it is like to be dead, individuals will be most likely to attribute to dead agents those types of mental states that they cannot imagine being without. In Study 2, the developmental emergence of such reasoning was investigated. In Experiment 1, 4--6-year-olds and 6--8-year-olds were asked a series of biological questions about a dead agent (e.g., "Does his brain still work?"). Even the youngest children were likely to reason that biological processes cease at death. In Experiment 2, different, similarly aged children and also a group of 10--12-year-olds were asked a series of psychological questions about a dead agent (e.g., "Does he know that he's not alive?"). The youngest children were equally likely to reason that both cognitive (e.g., knowing) and psychobiological states (e.g., hunger) continue after death, while the oldest children were more likely to reason that cognitive states continue. Finally, in Experiment 3, both children and adults were asked about a broad array of psychological states (those used in Study 1). With the exception of the youngest children (M = 5 years), who did not distinguish between any of the psychological state types, older children (M = 11-years) and adults were most likely to attribute to dead agents epistemic, emotional, and desire states, suggesting that developmentally based mechanisms underlie implicit accounts of deceased agents' minds.