The Easter Bunny and Santa Claus: Some thoughts for the science-minded

© 2010 Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all rights reserved

Do you remember when y'all stopped believing in the Easter Bunny? Santa Claus?

If you lot grew up speaking English (or whatever of the Germanic languages), these fantasy characters probably played a part in your early childhood.

A positive part? I'll bet most of the states would say yes.

Simply some parents worry almost the implications of misleading children. These are lies, after all.

Maybe, when kids discover the truth, they volition experience their parents take betrayed them.

In add-on, some parents are concerned near critical thinking.

In a unmarried night, a rabbit delivers millions of gifts to children effectually the world. Asking kids to have this might seem like an invitation to be credulous and irrational.

So it's interesting to consider the research. Overall, it's pretty reassuring.

As yous might expect, kids believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny every bit a office of age.

Kids are also more probable to believe if their parents encourage them to do so (Prentice et al 1978; Anderson and Prentice 1994).

But it'due south not clear that these beliefs are a sign of greater gullibility or even a greater involvement in fantasy.

In one report, researchers found that a belief in Santa or the Easter Bunny was unrelated to other measures of a child's interest in fantasy (Prentice et al 1978).

And a recent series of experiments conducted at Harvard found that kids brand important distinctions betwixt beliefs in folkloric, fantasy characters and beliefs in other unseen, just scientifically-established, entities (Harris et al 2006).

Kids who professed to believe in Santa or the Bunny were nonetheless less certain about it than they were nigh the beingness of oxygen or germs.

Some other set of experiments revealed that 4-year olds don't invoke magical explanations for things that happen in the real world–not unless those things otherwise seem impossible (Rosengren and Hickling 1994).

I'm reminded of anthropologist Dan Sperber, who notes that people are oft asked to believe things that are irrational or cool. For instance, the Bororo of South America affirm that they are red macaws.

Practise people actually believe such things? Not exactly. The very absurdity or implausibility of the ideas forces people to think of them in a special way.

These are mysteries. They can't be strictly true. So people don't take them every bit literal truths (Sperber 1974).

What happens when kids finally penetrate the veil and decline our fantasies?

We might feel a little awkward or contemplative. But the kids don't announced to be heartbroken.

When researchers questioned children who had stopped assertive in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny–a milestone they reached around the age of 7–kids reported feeling pleased.

They had figured it out. They were aware now.

It was the parents–not the kids–who reported feeling a scrap distressing (Anderson and Prentice 1994; Cyr 2002).

And the lying?

Maybe some kids are a flake disturbed near it.

Merely John Condry's dissertation research included interviews with hundreds of kids, and none of them reported feeling aroused at their parents when they constitute out the truth about Easter and Christmas (Condry 1987).

Maybe that's considering kids realize the deception is a friendly one. Studies suggest that children equally young as 3 sympathise the kindly "white prevarication."

For instance, preschoolers have been presented with desperately-drawn sketches and asked to rate them. When the artist was nowadays, the kids said more than complementary things.

In other studies, kids have pretended to be happy with gifts they didn't actually similar. They've told white lies to spare the feelings of people wearing goofy make-upward (run into Xu et al 2010 for review of all these studies).

And then I'g betting that kids tin can forgive a benign, culturally-sanctioned deception like the Easter Bunny.

And kids plainly savor the ideas, even if they no longer believe in them (Cyr 2002)

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References: Children, the Easter bunny, and Santa Claus

References

Anderson CJ, Prentice NM. 1994. opens in a new windowRun across with reality: children'due south reactions on discovering the Santa Claus myth. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev. 25(two):67-84.

Condry J. 1987. Developmental Differences in Children'southward Reasoning about Santa Claus and Other Fantasy Characters." Diss Cornell U.

Cyr C. 2002. Practice reindeer and children know something we don't? CMAJ 167(12): 1325–1327.

Harris PL, Pasquini ES, Duke S, Asscher JJ, and Pons F. Germs and angels: the office of testimony in young children'southward ontology. Dev Sci. 9(1):76-96.

Prentice NM, Manosevitz Grand, and Hubbs L. 1978. Imaginary figures of early childhood: santa claus, easter bunny, and the tooth fairy. Am J Orthopsychiatry. 48(iv):618-28.

Rosengren KS and Hickling AK. 1994. Seeing is believing: Children'southward explanations of commonplace, magical, and extraordinary transformations. Child Development 65: 1605-1626.

Xu F, Bao Ten, Fu G, Talwar V, and Lee K. 2010. Lying and truth-telling in children: From concept to action. 81(2): 581 – 596.

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