Belief in saviors extends childhood experience of parental protection

Evidence

A complementary death-denying strategy is the belief in a personal and personified savior. From a child’s perspective, parents are gigantic and seemingly all-powerful beings with a knack for showing up whenever bodily or emotional needs arise. It’s natural, therefore, for a young mind to also believe in stories about omnipotent beings interceding in matters of life and death. Neither Snow White nor Sleeping Beauty is really dead; they are just waiting to be saved through the affection of a protective, rescuing, paternal caregiver. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 144

Categorization

• XREF: Offers a psychological origin story for religious belief in divine saviors — connects to the book’s broader terror-management account of religion.

Related

• Children fear death more than parents realize they do (similarity 0.78)