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Experimenting with Religion
Experimenting
with Religion
The New Science of Belief

J O NAT HA N J O N G
 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
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above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Jong, Jonathan, author.
Title: Experimenting with religion : the new science of belief / Jonathan Jong.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2023] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022054439 (print) | LCCN 2022054440 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190875541 (hb) | ISBN 9780190875565 (epub) | ISBN 9780197677568
Subjects: LCSH: Religiousness. | Psychometrics.
Classification: LCC BV4509.5 .J665 2023 (print) | LCC BV4509.5 (ebook) |
DDC 200.1/9—dc23/eng/20230110
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022054439
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022054440

DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190875541.001.0001

Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

For Ella Mae, my one; and Edith, ours
 Contents

Preface and acknowledgments  ix

1. (How) can psychologists study religion?  1

2. Does thinking cause atheism?  21
3. Are children creationists?  40
4. Is God like Superman?  56
5. Do children believe in souls?  70
6. What does God know?  88
7. What makes an effective ritual?  109
8. Does death anxiety drive religion?  125
Epilogue  145

Notes  161
Index  177
 Preface and acknowledgments

This is not a book about religion. There is a lot about religion in it, but it is re-
ally a book about science. More specifically, it is a book about experimental
psychology, and how a group of experimental psychologists have used the
tools of this trade to study religion as a human phenomenon. For the past
decade, I have counted myself lucky to join these scientists in the pursuit of
understanding how and why people believe in things like gods, souls, and
rituals. I am additionally grateful for their time and cooperation as I was
writing this book, without which it would not have been possible. In an im-
portant way, this book is as much about them as about their research. Special
thanks, then, to Will Gervais, Bob Calin-​Jageman, Deborah Kelemen, Justin
Barrett, Bruce Hood, Nathalia Gjersoe, Ben Purzycki, Cristine Legare, Ken
Vail III, and Brittany Cardwell for speaking with me at length. I hope not to
have misrepresented them in any way in retelling their stories.
As far as I can tell from my limited powers of introspection, there are
two motivations behind this book. The first is my desire to assess this field
of research—​ the psychology of religion—​ especially in light of recent
developments in psychology more broadly. As I cover in greater detail in the
opening chapters of this book (and especially in Chapter 2), psychology is
currently undergoing a crisis of confidence, and perhaps rightly so. I wanted
to take a close and sober look at the work we have done so far to figure out
whether we have just been wasting our time, applying egregiously inade-
quate methods to our research questions. And even if we haven’t, I wanted to
think through the challenges we will need to meet to do a better job than we
have done. Admittedly, this seems like inside baseball. The second reason for
writing this book is less insular.
The emphasis when presenting scientific research to the general public is
almost always, understandably on the discoveries themselves. But this leaves
out the process of scientific discovery, from the conception of the hypothesis
to the design of the experiment, the analysis of the data, and the eventual
publication of the paper. This is what I want to focus on: I want to give people
a sense of what it is like to do science, to be a scientist behind the discoveries.
Frankly, I don’t know if any of the findings presented in this book will stand
x Preface and acknowledgments

the test of time, and it is not my intention to present any of them as solid
and undisputed fact. Rather, what I hope you take away from the book is an
appreciation for science as a human endeavor—​a social endeavor, even—​to
understand the world and ourselves.
Such an appreciation for the human and social side of science is, I be-
lieve, important for cultivating a healthy trust in science. As I am writing
this preface, the world is still slowly emerging from the COVID-​19 pan-
demic, and it has been interesting—​if also vexing—​to observe the various
interactions between science and society. There has been alarming skepti-
cism over vaccines, for example; and also a lot of anger over mask mandates
and lockdowns. Some of this anger has been a reaction against changes in
policy, which were sometimes (though not always) informed by changes in
the scientific consensus. Frustrations were, more often than not, directed to-
ward politicians, but scientists were also accused of ignorance and fickleness.
But, from the perspective of a scientist, the changes in scientific con-
sensus (and subsequent changes in policy and advice) were totally predict-
able. When the pandemic first began, before there was much good data about
COVID-​19 specifically, scientists gave advice based on what they knew about
previous pandemics; as they discovered more and more about COVID-​19,
they could update the advice they were giving. And learning more about
COVID-​19 also involved learning more about how to learn about COVID-​
19: what the best questions to ask were, and how best to answer them.
I feel even more strongly now than I did when I first began writing this
book that a better understanding of how scientists work is crucial for setting
appropriate expectations about scientific discoveries, which are always pro-
visional and partial. It is something of a joke among scientists that the con-
clusion to every research project is always “more research is required.” But
like all good jokes, this one is predicated on something true.
I owe my interest in the processes of science to a philosopher rather than
to any scientist: Alan Musgrave, who taught me history and philosophy of
science at the University of Otago. I cannot say that we agree, either about
science or about religion, but his lectures have remained with me, and have
found their way into this book. When I needed help with the physics, my
friend Timothy Prisk stepped in to give me crash courses on demand. Neither
of them is to blame for any errors I have made.
My fascination with religion has deeper and more personal roots, and there
is a moderately worrying sense in which my academic research has been an
exercise in narcissistic navel-​gazing. Once upon a few years ago, I thought
 Preface and acknowledgments xi

I had to choose between an academic career in psychology and a life of serv­

ice as a priest: the Bishop of Dunedin at the time, the Right Reverend Dr
Kelvin Wright, would have none of this and sent me packing to Oxford to
take up a postdoctoral position. He arranged for me to be trained in Oxford
alongside my job, and I was ordained at the Cathedral here a few years later.
Ever since, I have managed to live a rich life in two parts. I do not know if my
scientific research contributes in any way to my work as a priest, but I can say
with some confidence that parish work reminds me daily why I am a psychol-
ogist of religion. It is easy for psychologists to fall into the habit of thinking
of people as cells in a spreadsheet or points on a graph, as “participants” or
worse still “subjects.” But my parishioners are very obviously people, with
earnest faiths and real doubts: and if the psychology of religion is not funda-
mentally about them and people like them around the world, then it’s not at
all obvious what it is about or indeed what it is for.
Several institutions have supported me as I wrote this book. The Centre for
Trust, Peace and Social Relations at Coventry University adopted me as my
previous department was shut down under slightly dubious circumstances.
The School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography and St Benet’s
Hall at Oxford have also been welcoming homes-​away-​from-​institutional-​
home. The John Templeton Foundation and the Templeton World Charity
Foundation have both supported my work on this book in various ways,
directly and indirectly. The former funded the Think Write Publish: Science
and Religion project based at Arizona State University. The idea for this book
grew into something real while I was a Fellow in this program, with thir-
teen other brilliant writers. I am grateful to Lee Gutkind and Daniel Sarewitz
for electing me to the fellowship, and to Tobias Tanton, who suggested that
I apply.
Joan Bossert at Oxford University Press very kindly invited me to submit
a book proposal based on a very brief message, and Abby Gross and Nadina
Persaud then helped me to develop it into something worth publishing. I am
particularly indebted to the anonymous reviewers they appointed, whose
suggestions I have incorporated as much and as best as I knew. This book
has also been immeasurably improved by Tobias and Sarah Tanton, Adam
Baimel, Peter Hill, Emily Burdett, and Emma Pritchard, who took the time
to read drafts of it.
A lot has happened in my life in the five years since I first pitched this
book to Oxford University Press (OUP), but none more important than my
marriage to Ella Mae Lewis. We had our first date in Washington, DC, in
xii Preface and acknowledgments

May 2017: she was in town for a conference about human trafficking, and I
had just come into town for a conference on the cognitive science of belief
at Georgetown. We then met up in London, Berlin, and Oxford before de-
ciding that we had had enough of this peripatetic romance. We were married
in January 2019 at St Mary Magdalen’s parish church in Oxford. OUP was
kind enough to allow me a deadline extension as a wedding present. Our
daughter Edith was born a little over a year later. It is to them both that this
book is dedicated.

Michaelmas Term
2022
 1
(How) can psychologists study religion?

It did not take long for me to decide that social psychology was the science
of everything that was interesting about people. Like all undergraduate
psychology majors, I was taught the classics: Stanley Milgram’s obedience
studies, Leon Festinger’s cognitive dissonance research, Jane Elliott’s Blue
Eye-​Brown Eyes classroom activity on prejudice, Donald Dutton and Arthur
Aron’s Suspension Bridge experiment on romantic attraction, John Darley
and Daniel Batson’s Good Samaritan study on the bystander effect, and so on.
I won’t spoil them for you—​information about them is easy enough to
find1—​except to say that they shone a piercing light for me into human na-
ture. By my second year as an undergraduate, I was a born-​again experi-
mental social psychologist, utterly convinced that this was the best way to
understand how people’s minds work. Soon thereafter I began running my
own experiments. Then, as now, my interests were broad. I ran studies on
beauty and humor before landing on religion as a central focus. Religion,
humor, beauty, morality, romance, prejudice, obedience: see what I mean
about social psychology being the science of everything that is interesting
about people?
A lot has changed since I was a student, not only within myself but also
across my field. As we will explore further in the next chapter, there was a
sort of crisis of confidence in social psychology just as I was leaving graduate
school. This crisis and the revolution that it sparked made us question a lot
of what we thought we knew, including from those classic studies that con-
verted me to psychology in the first place. It even made us question whether
psychologists are up to the job of shining light into human nature at all, and
if so, how?
This book is an attempt to grapple with this question, if not necessarily to
answer it. It is a sort of critical meditation on experimental psychology: our
methods, their strengths and limitations, and the insight they can or cannot
provide about why people do and say and think and feel the way they do.
There are, broadly speaking, two ways to write a book like this. I could have
sampled a broad array of topics in psychology—​religion, humor, beauty, and

Experimenting with Religion. Jonathan Jong, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190875541.003.0001
2 Experimenting with Religion

so forth—​to consider the breadth of what psychological experimentation

can tell us, perhaps even comparing them to experiments from other scien-
tific fields: Galileo dropping balls of different weights off the Leaning Tower
of Pisa to disprove Aristotle’s theory of gravity, Antoine Lavoisier burning
metals in bell jars to discover the role of oxygen in combustion, Thomas
Young shining light through two vertical slits to show that light can behave
like a wave, and the like. (I should note that Galileo probably never ran the
experiment attributed to him, and Young may not have either.2) It would have
been perfectly reasonable to write about the most important experiments in
psychology but this has been done several times before.3 Besides, it seemed
to me both more interesting and more rigorous a test to home in on one phe-
nomenon, and see how far experimental psychologists can go in helping us
understand it.
Religion is the phenomenon that interests me most. I have spent my entire
career trying to understand where it comes from. Most religious traditions
have their own stories about this, of course. Roughly speaking, they all say
that their own faiths began when the gods revealed themselves to specially
chosen people, whereas other faiths are the product of human folly or the
schemes of malevolent beings, or a combination of the two. Two observations
may be made about these kinds of explanations. The first is that they are at
least in part the purview of historians, who are better placed than I am to
evaluate the historical veracity of stories about Moses and a burning bush,
Siddartha Gautama meditating under a Bo tree, or Muhammad praying in a
cave on Jabal al-​Nour.
The second observation is that even if we believed these stories—​even if
we believed that YHWH spoke to Moses, Brahmā Sahampati to Siddartha,
and the angel Jibrīl to Muhammad—​we would still be left with questions
about the human side of these interactions. What is it about the human mind
that allowed these people to believe that they had spoken to gods and angels?
And what is it about the human mind that has made billions and billions of
people since believe these stories? This is where psychologists come in.

Francis Galton on prayer and longevity

There are many ways in which psychologists go about trying to figure out
stuff, and this book is really only about one of them: experiments. There
will therefore be no stories about psychoanalysts asking people reclined on
 (How) can psychologists study religion? 3

couches about their relationships with their mothers. Nor will there be an-
ything about monks meditating in neuroimaging machines. The first ap-
proach is a relic of the past, fortunately; the second is still very much in its
infancy, especially when it comes to studies on religion. There is, however,
a very common and useful method that will be largely sidelined here, that is
the correlational study.
As far as I can tell, the first-​ever application of statistics to the study of reli-
gion was Francis Galton’s 1872 Statistical Inquiries into the Efficacy of Prayer,
which is a sort of crude correlational study.4 Galton was a genius, though
seemingly quite a different sort of genius from his cousin Charles Darwin.
Where Darwin was focused on his grand theory, Galton was a bit of a dab-
bler. Or, to put things in a more positive light, he was a polymath, who practi-
cally invented meteorology, forensic science, and behavioral genetics, among
other things. He also made great contributions to statistics and was a pioneer
of correlational research.
A correlation describes how closely two things are related to one another.
For example, if we want to know whether tall people also tend to weigh
more, we can collect data about people’s heights and weights and calculate
the correlation between them. Galton was the first to apply this technique to
studying humans, not only our physical traits like height and weight, but also
psychological ones like personality and intelligence. Unfortunately, he also
used these techniques to promote eugenics, which he also invented, coining
the term in 1833.
Galton wanted to know whether people who received more prayers also
enjoyed longer lives. Galton did not have quantitative data about how often
different individual people were the subjects of others’ prayers, but it was
common knowledge that prayers for certain social classes of people were
obligatory. Prayers for the members of European royal families, for ex-
ample, were standard elements of Christian worship. This is still true even
now: a prayer “for the King’s majesty” is still in the Church of England’s Book
of Common Prayer, though this is much less commonly used than it was in
Galton’s day. With this in mind, Galton managed to find lifespan data for sev-
eral classes of people, including members of royal houses. Looking at these,
he found that they lived no longer than other “eminent men,” such as gentry
and aristocracy, or indeed clergy, lawyers, doctors, military officers, traders,
artists, and scholars. There was, in other words, no positive correlation be-
tween being prayed for and living longer. If anything, they enjoyed shorter
lifespans, even when excluding deaths by accident or violence. Members of
4 Experimenting with Religion

royal houses averaged about 64 years, compared to other classes of people

who tended to make it beyond 67. From this, he concluded that prayer does
not work, at least not to lengthen lives.
Admittedly, this was not the most sophisticated study. These days, it
would probably have been rejected from scientific journals on straightfor-
ward methodological grounds. For starters, Galton’s sample was not at all
representative of the general population: it was composed entirely of fa-
mous people whose lives were recorded in biographical dictionaries. Galton
essentially conducted Wikipedia research. Furthermore, and more seri-
ously, Galton’s study also suffers from what we call confounding variables.
The problem is that members of royal houses probably differed from other
people—​even other eminent individuals—​in a variety of ways besides the
extents to which they were the subjects of people’s prayers. Galton concluded
that prayer simply does not work to prolong lives, but it is possible that kings
and queens are, for genetic or lifestyle reasons, more likely than others to die
young. Perhaps the prayers do work, but just not enough to compensate for
the negative health effects of inbreeding and excess. Galton thought this pos-
sibility implausible but could not rule it out.
All correlational studies suffer from this latter limitation. Very good corre-
lational studies try to account for confounding variables by measuring them
and statistically “controlling” for them. More often than not, however, they
provide less certainty than scientists would like for questions like Galton’s
about the effects and efficacies of things from prayers to pills. This is where
experiments come in.

The Great Prayer Experiment

The experiment is the poster child of science. This is not because it is the only
way to do science, but because it is a uniquely powerful method for looking
at causes and effects. If Galton wanted more certainty about the efficacy of
prayer or lack thereof, he should have run an experiment. The most recent
and rigorous example of a scientific experiment—​or randomized control
trial, as they say in clinical contexts—​on the efficacy of prayer was published
in 2006 by a team led by Herbert Benson at the Harvard Medical School.5 It is
sometimes dubbed the “Great Prayer Experiment” because of its scale.
The experiment involved 1,802 coronary artery bypass surgery patients
across six hospitals. Instead of trying to measure how much or how often
 (How) can psychologists study religion? 5

they were prayed for, Benson’s team decided to manipulate the dose of
prayer each patient received. This—​manipulation—​is the essential differ-
ence between an experiment and a correlational study. Correlational studies
observe the variation that exists in the world; experimental studies control
conditions and examine what changes result. Conditions can be manipu-
lated either between-​subjects or within-​subjects.6 A study with a between-​
subjects design involves comparing different individuals or groups. When
I was in school, the standard example involved two pots containing iden-
tical amounts of the same soil and water, into which were planted identical
amounts of the same seed: one was exposed to sunlight while the other was
kept in the dark, and—​lo!—​the former sprouted and grew, while the other
remained dormant.
The classic example of a within-​subjects experiment is a bit like an in-
fomercial for exercise equipment, in that it involves before and after
measurements, sandwiched between which is the experimental manipula-
tion. Psychologists tend not to like this particular setup because we worry
that participants don’t respond well to being asked the same questions twice.
The more common kind of within-​subjects experiment in psychology is
like shopping for a wedding cake: it involves exposing each participant to a
whole bunch of different things that vary in just a handful of ways in different
combinations. In the case of a wedding cake, this allows us to work out what
traits—​texture, sweetness, type of icing, and so forth—​we like, even if our
ideal cake was not among the ones we tried. Now that I think about it, maybe
only experimentalists shop for wedding cakes this way.
The Great Prayer Experiment was a between-​subjects study. Benson’s
team randomly allocated the patients into three groups: these three groups
were then subjected to slightly different experimental conditions. This is
the “random” part of a randomized control trial. Random allocation is a
common way of making the groups as comparable as possible to begin with,
so that the researchers can be sure that whatever changes emerge at the end
of the study are due to the experimental conditions, and not to preexisting
differences between groups. Random allocation makes it very unlikely that
there are, for example, more genetically compromised and sedentary kings
and queens in one of the groups than in the others. More importantly for
this experiment, it makes it unlikely that patients in one group start off less
healthy than those in the others. Benson’s team actually checked for this and
found that the three groups were indeed very well matched in terms of their
cardiovascular history as well as their sex and age distributions.
6 Experimenting with Religion

Next, they told the first two groups of patients that they might receive
prayers from others. Only one of these groups—​the “experimental” or “treat-
ment” group—​actually did receive prayers; the other—​the “control” group
(hence, randomized control trial)—​did not. The praying was done by three
Christian organizations, which received a list of names of people for whom to
pray that they might have “a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery
and no complications.” So, we have two groups of people, well matched in
terms of age, sex, and cardiovascular health, all of whom knew they might be
prayed for, but only one group of which in fact received additional prayers.
I say “additional” prayers because Benson’s team did not prohibit other
people—​family and friends, and so forth—​from praying for the patients.
Almost everyone expected that at least some family and friends would be
praying for them, so this is really an experiment about the efficacy of extra
prayers by strangers. Anyway, the point is that the only meaningful differ-
ence between these two groups of patients is that one of them received extra
prayers. This then is the main experimental manipulation in this study. If
Benson’s group discovered that, at the end of the experiment, those patients
were better off, then it is reasonable to conclude that the manipulation—​the
extra prayers—​was what made the difference.
This is not what they discovered. They observed the patients for 30 days
after the surgery and found no differences between the patients who re-
ceived extra prayers and those who did not. The patients in the treatment
group were not any less likely to die, nor were they less likely to suffer health
complications within the 30-​day period. You might say that the Great Prayer
Experiment vindicated Galton’s sketchy study. It also found something else,
in the third group of patients. Unlike in the other two groups, these patients
were told that they would be prayed for, and indeed were: Benson’s team
did not lie to them. This was their second experimental manipulation. Like
the first group of patients, this third group received prayers: unlike the first
group of patients, this third group were assured of extra prayers. This added
assurance seems to have had an adverse effect: 8% of patients in this group
suffered more health complications than the other two groups. So, prayers
did not make things any better, but awareness of prayers seems to have made
things worse!
We still don’t know why Benson’s third group suffered more complications
than the other two groups. It could just have been a statistical fluke, a “chance
finding” as Benson’s team put it. For example, despite randomly allocating
people into groups and checking that the groups were similar in various
 (How) can psychologists study religion? 7

ways, it is still possible that the third group of patients started off more sus-
ceptible to health complications than the others in some way that Benson’s
team had not considered. This sort of thing happens sometimes, even in very
big studies. This is one reason for attempting to replicate experiments, and
not to put too much stock in the findings of any single study.
It is also possible that knowing that they were the beneficiaries of extra
prayers affected the patients in some way. It may have made them overconfi-
dent and therefore more reckless about their diet as they were recuperating,
for example. Or, quite the opposite, it may have made them more anxious,
which may in turn have had adverse effects on their health. As one of the
researchers in Benson’s team mused at a press conference, “The patient might
think, ‘Am I so sick that they have to call in the prayer team?’ ”7
Some people balk at the idea that scientific studies—​correlational, experi-
mental, or otherwise—​can show us whether or not prayers work. I probably
should have started with a less controversial example than the Benson ex-
periment, but I could not resist the temptation. I confess that I am somewhat
sympathetic to this reaction, largely on theological grounds. According to
most Christian theologians—​and almost certainly also Jewish and Muslim
ones, though I know much less about them—​prayers only work when God
wills them to. Furthermore, God can act for the good health of anyone even
in the absence of prayers offered. If so, then we should not necessarily expect
that prayer will necessarily confer health benefits. Without access to data
about God’s will, the tools of science are unable to answer the question. This
line of reasoning is sound as far as it goes, but I do also worry that it goes too
far. According to the same theologians—​and indeed to mainstream Jewish,
Christian, and Muslim teaching more generally—​nothing happens except as
willed by God. And yet, this should not stop us from being able to learn about
causes and effects in the natural world via experiment. Gravity does not work
unless God wills it to, but no one thinks that we need data about God’s will to
run experiments on general relativity. Perhaps prayer is a special case: or per-
haps this is just a case of special pleading.
Psychologists are, broadly speaking, less interested in whether prayers
work than in why people believe that they do. We are not interested in
studying the will of the gods; rather, we are interested in people’s beliefs about
gods, including beliefs about what gods will. In this way, the psychology of
religion is no different from the psychology of any other aspect of human
life. Some psychologists study people’s political beliefs; others study people’s
moral beliefs; we study people’s religious beliefs. Now, some people are
8 Experimenting with Religion

probably also going to balk at the idea that scientific studies can get at the
causes of their religious beliefs: perhaps this too is a special case, like prayer.
I’m afraid I don’t have very much to say to such people, except to note that
they rarely have any problem with scientists trying to investigate other
people’s religious beliefs.
Fortunately, this hardline view is not very widely held, even among reli-
gious folk. Most people are perfectly happy with the idea that some people
might be more receptive to religious ideas than others, and that some reli-
gious ideas are more compelling than others, and that religious changes
might happen more frequently in some stages of life than others, and that
certain life events might lead people toward faith or away from it. Some re-
ligious people are even quite keen to find answers to these sorts of questions
because they might prove useful to their respective religious causes. In fact,
the earliest psychologists—​in the late 19th century and early 20th century
in the United States—​shared this mindset as they researched things like re-
ligious conversion in adolescence and the role of religious experiences in
moral development. This attitude cuts both ways, of course. Atheist activists
might also be interested in finding out more about what causes religious be-
lief, so that they can nip it in the bud. In any case, and mostly for reasons of
intellectual curiosity rather than practical utility, these are exactly the sorts of
ideas that psychologists are interested in exploring.
In the following chapters, we will encounter rather a lot of studies, but the
main focus is on seven experiments. These are all experiments in the sense
that the Great Prayer Experiment is an experiment. In each case, something
is being manipulated and something else—​usually a belief—​is then meas-
ured. There is one crucial difference between the experiments covered in
this book and Benson’s Great Prayer Experiment, besides the shift in subject
matter. It is, in some ways, the great challenge of psychological research more
generally: measurement.

Psychological measurement

Galton and Benson had it easy: both wanted to measure when someone had
died. It is true that there are multiple biomedical definitions of “death,” and
also multiple calendric systems with which to count one’s age at death. Even
so, once researchers decide on a definition, there are standardized and well-​
understood methods of determining when someone has died. We know how
 (How) can psychologists study religion? 9

to observe whether someone’s heart is beating unaided, or whether there is

any spontaneous activity in their brainstem. We also know how to compute
someone’s age, whether it’s on the Gregorian solar calendar or a Chinese
lunar one. Even debates about when life begins do not really pose a problem
for measurement, as long as we apply a single definition to all cases. Dating
life from birth is obviously quite easy: but we are also very good at accu-
rately estimating the date of conception now. Assessments of patients’ health
complications do require some thought about what counts as a complica-
tion: fortunately, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons has a standard definition,
which Benson’s team followed.
In principle, this is how psychological measurement works too.
Measurement is the practical manifestation of definition. First, we need
some working definition of the thing we want to measure. Here we face our
first problem. The question “Why are people religious?” turns out to be too
vague, because the term “religious” can mean several different things. Our
religious identities, behaviors, and beliefs are not entirely unrelated to one
another, but nor are they quite the same thing. Many people in Britain iden-
tify as Christian, for example, but have neither any firm theological beliefs
nor any regular religious practices. Others regularly engage in practices like
prayer and meditation without identifying with the religious traditions from
which these practices emerged. Still others hold more-​or-​less inchoate su-
pernatural beliefs—​about a higher power or life after death or whatever—​
without either identifying with a religious tradition or engaging much with
religious practices.
As we touched on briefly earlier, “religion” is hardly the only word that
carries multiple meanings: “death” does too. But in the case of death, we
can clearly delineate between cardiopulmonary and brain death and un-
derstand the relationship between them. The situation is quite different for
the various aspects and types of religiosity. Most psychologists distinguish
between religious beliefs, behaviors, identities, and experiences: but there
is no consensus on what these things are, let alone how to measure them.
What we do agree on is that, with the exception of behavior, they are not
directly observable. We can hear a heart beating through a stethoscope, and
therefore detect its cessation: not so for a belief or an emotional experience,
religious or otherwise. We can directly hear what people say and watch what
they do, but we all know that people’s words and actions are not always accu-
rate representations of their thoughts and feelings. All the same, behavior—​
including verbal behavior—​is often the best access we have into people’s
10 Experimenting with Religion

minds. Almost all psychological measurement is really measurement of be-

havior that we interpret as telling us something about what’s going on in
people’s heads.
So far it sounds as if “psychological measurement” is just a fancy way
of talking about what everyone does in our everyday social interactions.
We are constantly observing how people behave to guess at what they are
thinking, how they are feeling, and what they want. If psychologists are
better at mind-​reading than other folks are, it can only be because we have
learned how to ask good questions and how to interpret answers. The skill of
asking questions well is one we share with other social scientists, of course,
as well as with journalists. Like journalists, some social scientists—​chiefly
anthropologists—​ ask questions in the context of a face-​ to-​
face inter-
view or something similar. Psychologists, like many sociologists, political
scientists, and behavioral economists, mostly ask people questions through
questionnaires, superficially similar to the quizzes that pop up all the time on
social media.
Among the many things psychologists study are the ways in which the
phrasing of questions, the format in which they are presented, and the con-
text in which they are asked affect people’s answers. We, and other social
scientists, benefit from this research: it helps us to ask better questions and
to watch out for sources of bias or error. The most famous of these errors is
probably the leading question. Consider the following question:

What is your religion?

This question simply assumes that the respondent has a religion. Even if
“none” is an option, the way the question is asked implies that the respondent
should mention something like Christianity or Buddhism. This in turn
means that it is likely to lead to overestimations of the number of religious
people in the sample. Unfortunately, this kind of question is quite common.
This exact question was used in the United Kingdom’s most recent census
for England and Wales. A better way of asking the same question might be to
first ask

Do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion?

before asking those who respond “Yes” about their specific religious identi-
ties, which the British Cohort Study has commendably done. Comparisons
 (How) can psychologists study religion? 11

of the two methods show a substantial difference in the number of nonreli-

gious individuals counted, so it is clear that the phrasing of the question does
matter.8
There are other sources of error and bias besides leading questions, and
the one that is perhaps most pertinent to psychologists of religion is cul-
tural bias. Even psychological phenomena long considered to be uni-
versal turn out to vary across cultures. The Müller-​Lyer optical illusion, for
example—​where two identical horizontal lines appear as if they are of dif-
ferent lengths—​is greater in some cultures than in others.9 Clinical diag-
noses of psychological disorders also require cultural sensitivity, as different
symptoms emerge in different contexts. Psychosis, for example, presents
very differently in the United States than it does in India and Ghana.10
Indeed, even within cultures there can be differences between groups, such
as gender differences in symptoms for autism.11 Intelligence testing—​the
use of IQ tests like the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), especially
in clinical and educational contexts—​has also been subject to criticism for
cultural bias, and the makers of such tests have made efforts to make more
culture free tests.
If optical illusions, psychological disorders, and basic cognitive abil-
ities are shaped by the cultures we inhabit, then things like religion are
even more obviously so. Religious beliefs, rituals, and organizational
structures obviously vary across cultures, and this diversity raises real
challenges for measurement. Consider the seemingly simple question of
how religious someone is. Not only are there multiple criteria for reli-
giousness, but these differ from tradition to tradition. American evan-
gelical Christians might emphasize private prayer and the reading of
Scripture; Israeli Orthodox Jews might emphasize the observance of die-
tary rules; Malaysian Chinese folk religionists might emphasize the vener-
ation of ancestors and the feng shui consultation. Even if we were to focus
on a single religious behavior like prayer in Galton’s study, we might need
to be more specific about what we mean across religious traditions: some
prayers are conversational and others formal, and these might not be
comparable phenomena. The challenge of cross-​cultural measurement
used to be the special concern of cross-​cultural psychologists, but as soci-
eties pluralize and cultures mingle, issues of cultural bias are becoming
more relevant to us all.
12 Experimenting with Religion

What makes a good psychological measure?

I love online quizzes. I know which Hogwarts house I belong to, according
to the Pottermore quiz (Slytherin: make of that what you will). I know which
Disney Princess I am, according to Buzzfeed (Belle: make of that what you
will). Then, there are quizzes that seem more serious. There are, for example,
political quizzes and personality tests and even IQ tests available online for
free whose results suggest that I am an introverted socialist genius. I like these
better than the other tests that imply that I am a psychopath from Newark.12
Psychologists can be quite snobbish about these online quizzes, but there is
really no reason to be prejudiced about these things. It is an empirical ques-
tion whether they are any good. Some of them are going to be meaningless,
and others might actually have some predictive power: the difficulty is in
telling them apart.
There is an entire subdiscipline within psychology called psychometrics
dedicated to the task of understanding what we are measuring and how well
we are measuring it. We have statistical techniques for checking how inter-
nally consistent a measure is, and whether any of its items are out of place. We
have methods for checking whether a measure works in the same way across
different groups, including cultural groups. We can also evaluate measures
on how internally consistent they are as well as how stable—​as opposed to
fickle—​they are within individuals. These are all checks for different kinds of
reliability. There are also checks for validity, which assess the extent to which
the measure can predict behaviors and other outcomes. A psychological
measure—​or Buzzfeed quiz—​is good to the extent that it enjoys high levels of
reliability and validity.
Everyone has heard of IQ tests: some of you may even have done some
online, like I have in moments of narcissism that quickly turn to dread at
the possibility of confounded expectations. If you have, then you might be
disappointed—​or relieved—​to hear that the free online versions rarely bear
any resemblance to standardized tests for general intelligence developed and
evaluated by psychologists.13 In contrast to the online tests that typically just
take a few minutes to complete, the Wechsler test I mentioned earlier typi-
cally takes over an hour. It consists of 10 different tasks, including on general
knowledge, vocabulary, logic, arithmetic, and pattern recognition.
The WAIS has been subjected to a lot of psychometric scrutiny since it
was released in 1955. Hundreds of thousands of people have completed it
or its child-​friendly version, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children
 (How) can psychologists study religion? 13

(WISC). The 10 WAIS subtests do measure different abilities, but it turns

out that performance across tests is sufficiently intercorrelated that a single
score—​usually called g, for “general intelligence”—​can be calculated from
them. These correlations between different parts of the WAIS indicate that it
is internally consistent. Furthermore, though changes do occur, for example
with formal education and aging, g tends to be fairly stable within individ-
uals, even when the test is taken years apart: this stability is sometimes called
test-​retest reliability.
The Wechsler is not the only widely used test of general intelligence: other
examples include the older Stanford-​Binet test, Raven’s Progressive Matrices,
and the Hakstian-​Cattell Comprehensive Ability Battery. This means we can
calculate g scores from multiple tests to see how they compare. This has not
been done very frequently because it is quite time-​consuming to complete a
single test, let alone several of them: but when it has been done, g scores from
different tests have been found to be very highly correlated with one another.
This suggests that all these tests are measuring the same thing, even while
having different emphases and formats. Psychometricians would say that
these different tests enjoy convergent validity. IQ tests have also been shown
to enjoy more predictive validity than traits like work ethic or likeability: g
can be used to predict a variety of real-​world outcomes, including academic
success, job performance, future income, and social mobility.14
Intelligence is not the only trait that psychologists have tried to measure.
Psychologists have been in the business of personality testing for a long
time. Religiosity is arguably more like a personality trait than like a cogni-
tive ability like intelligence, but the principles for what makes a good psy-
chological measure are quite similar in both cases. The most widely used and
researched personality tests are based on the five-​factor model of personality,
which distills personality into how conscientious, agreeable, extraverted,
open to experience, and neurotic someone is. My own scores on “big five”
personality tests tend to indicate that I score quite low on extraversion, high
on neuroticism and openness to experience, and middlingly on agreeable-
ness and conscientiousness. This implies that I am quite shy and anxious, but
also keen to try new things, and that I am neither very cooperative nor very
difficult, neither very diligent nor very lackadaisical.
As with tests for g, there are several ways to measure these five aspects of
personality. The most well-​regarded of these is the 240-​item NEO Personality
Inventory (NEO PI-​R),15 which has also enjoyed much psychometric scrutiny.
Like IQ tests but to a lesser extent, big five personality tests have been found to
14 Experimenting with Religion

enjoy pretty high levels of internal consistency and stability, while also being
sensitive to changes over a lifetime. Combinations of personality traits are also
decent predictors of various outcomes, including happiness, psychological
disorders, and quality of different kinds of personal relationships.16
Despite their psychometric virtues, IQ and personality measurements are
easily and often misunderstood, misinterpreted, and abused, often toward
prejudicial ends. For example, in some jurisdictions IQ is treated as a deter-
minant of criminal responsibility, so that anyone with an IQ score of below
70 cannot be prosecuted in the same way as anyone with an IQ score above
70. This seems reasonable enough, but in jurisdictions that still enforce the
death penalty, a single IQ point can be the difference between life and death.
This is a flagrant abuse of IQ tests, based on a serious misunderstanding of
how they work and how precise they can be: they are certainly not precise
enough for life-​or-​death decisions to turn on them. Similarly, personality-​
based explanations of conflict, especially in the workplace, can lead to com-
placency about improving policies and also to bias in recruitment and career
progression. Personality tests do predict behavior, including conflict-​related
behavior, but they do so best when we consider how personality interacts
with situational or environmental factors.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember about psychological meas-
ures is that they are measures of things, and not the things themselves. All
measurements are simplifications. Even quite straightforward measures of
traits like height and weight only capture certain elements of our physical
stature: health professionals certainly find height and weight measurements
useful, but these do not exhaustively describe our bodies. Similarly, IQ tests
measure what can reasonably be called intelligence, but this does not mean that
they measure everything that everyone means by the word. There are many
elements and types of what we might recognize as intelligence that IQ tests do
not cover, such as wisdom, common sense, creativity, and curiosity. Nor are the
big five factors exhaustive of what we mean by personality, and psychologists
have developed many other measures to capture specific elements of personality
not covered by the five-​factor model, including specific elements of religiosity.

Measuring religiosity

Since the 1960s, there has been an explosion in psychological measures of

religiosity. We have come a long way from just asking people whether they
 (How) can psychologists study religion? 15

identify with a religion or how often they attend religious services, though
these are still common measures of religiosity in other social sciences.
Indeed, we have come a long way from assuming that religiosity is a single
trait. There is widespread recognition that there are many different aspects
to and ways of being religious, and that it might be best to measure these
separately rather than to try to get at a g or even a big five for religiosity.
We have measures not only of diverse beliefs and behaviors—​beliefs
about God, about the afterlife, about karma; private religious behaviors,
and public ones—​but also about people’s religious orientations and motiv-
ations. Do they think of religion as an ongoing quest, or are they certain
that they have already arrived at the absolute truth? Are they devout be-
cause they see the social and practical benefits, or because they truly believe,
hook, line, and sinker? There are now hundreds of measures of different
aspects of religiosity. Some of these are valid and reliable, but not all.17 Of
course, to say that there are many validated measures of religiosity is not
to say that researchers always use them. In fact, very few of the studies cov-
ered in this book use validated measures. Despite the plethora of existing
measures, these researchers have felt the need to construct their own meas-
ures. In most cases, they had rather good reasons to do so. Sometimes, how-
ever, I wish that they had just used a validated measure because as we shall
see later on, the variability in research methods can lead to confusion when
results disagree.
There is something dissatisfying about this standard method of psycholog-
ical research that I have just described, even if we accept that psychologists
have devised clever techniques for asking questions and interpreting
answers. At least in the case of personality tests and religiosity measures, we
are asking people to tell us what they are like, what they believe, how they
feel. The trouble is that sometimes we don’t know what we are like, what we
believe, and how we feel. Our self-​awareness is limited: for some people more
so than for others, perhaps. To make things worse, we also have a penchant
for self-​deception. Sometimes, we know what we ought to think or how we
ought to feel, based on societal norms or whatever, and we convince our-
selves that that is what we personally think, how we personally feel. This
poses an obvious problem for self-​report measures. In response to this chal-
lenge, psychologists have also developed measures that do not require us to
ask people directly about their thoughts and feelings.
Psychoanalysts—​especially those of the Freudian persuasion—​have been
doing this sort of thing for decades, long before social psychologists came
16 Experimenting with Religion

into the picture. They have been interpreting dreams and drawings, and
catching people out for slips of the tongue, all in the effort to mine for elu-
sive information about the workings of the unconscious. Unfortunately,
these methods have all been found to be very unreliable when judged by
psychometric standards. Different analysts find different things in the same
dreams, drawings, and slips, which then do not predict subsequent behaviors
or outcomes very well at all. They might have therapeutic value and provide
a meaningful feeling of deep insight for some people, but they are not very
useful as measurement tools for psychologists.
Perhaps the most obvious way to bypass self-​report is to read people’s
brains directly. It would be very convenient if we could do this, but the use
of neuroimaging techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI) for psychological measurement still lies in the realm of science fic-
tion. This is partly because our knowledge of how the brain works is still very
poor. And the more we learn, the more complex we realize brain function is.
We now know, for example, that there is no “God spot” that we can measure.
No specific bit of the brain “lights up” when we believe in God. Not only
that, but there is probably no spot for anything. Consider, for example, the
amygdala, which has been very successfully popularized as the seat of fear.
The trouble is that it is a very unreliable biomarker for fear, and is also active
when other emotions—​disgust, sadness, even happiness—​are experienced.18
So, the fact that your amygdala is active at any given moment tells us very
little about how you feel.
Neuroscientists have mostly abandoned the effort to read our minds by
looking at specific spots. Instead, they are now developing ways to train
computers to learn what the whole brain is doing, for instance when we
are experiencing different emotions. This information can then be used to
predict our emotions from new brain scans. So far, this technique performs
better than just guessing randomly, but still only gets basic emotions—​like
fear and anger—​right about a quarter of the time.19 We have a long way to
go before we will be able to measure even simple beliefs and emotions this
way. Speaking to the magazine Scientific American, one of the pioneers of
this technique, Heini Saarimäki, said, “for now I think we are still safer if
you just ask people how they are feeling, rather than trying to read their
brain.”20
The techniques most widely used by experimental psychologists—​
including those we will meet here—​exploit the relationship between time and
thought. In 2011, the Nobel Prize–​winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman
 (How) can psychologists study religion? 17

popularized the idea in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow that there are inter-
esting differences between these two types of thinking: our initial, quick gut
reactions to things and our subsequent, slower rational deliberations.21 This
distinction explains a wide range of human experiences, besides the obvious
one of changing our minds when we give something some critical thought.
It also helps us to understand people’s psychological conflicts, as well as their
hypocrisies and inconsistencies.
Based on this idea, psychologists have developed ways to measure these
gut reactions, our intuitions, our tacit beliefs and attitudes that might even
exist underneath our conscious awareness. As we shall see, some of these
techniques are very simple, including asking participants to respond to
questions very quickly or, conversely, measuring how long they take to re-
spond. Some are more complicated, comparing response times between
different questions or different versions of a task. These sorts of meas-
ures have recently percolated into public discourse, as part of our current
conversations about implicit bias. Employees of many governments and
multinational corporations have been encouraged to complete Implicit
Association Tests (IATs) to assess their implicit racism, for example, even
though psychologists are still conducting research to understand the
benefits and limitations of tasks like the IAT for psychological measurement.
Bear this in mind, as we encounter time-​based measures in the experiments
we are looking at.

Can psychologists study religion?

We have spent a lot of this chapter thinking about measurement, which

I have been advised is a pretty good way to bore readers to death. But is-
sues of measurement are critically important, because our ability to study
religion scientifically turns on our ability to measure it. Measurement is the
foundation of every science, from physics to psychology. It is only when
we have a good method of measurement—​a reliable and valid one—​that
we can begin to ask more substantive questions, including questions about
causes and effects. This is true whether we are talking about correlational
research like Francis Galton’s or experimental research like the Great Prayer
Experiment.
Once we have a good method of measurement, we are more than halfway
toward being able to discover all kinds of interesting things. We can, for
18 Experimenting with Religion

example, run any number of correlational studies, much more rigorous

than Galton’s. We might want to know whether IQ predicts religiosity, for
example: whether smarter people are less likely to be religious, perhaps.
Equipped with the WAIS and a good measure of religiosity, we can soon
begin to collect data to answer our question (for more on this, see Chapter 2).
Or we might want to know whether different personality traits predict religi-
osity: again, equipped with the NEO-​PI-​R and a good measure of religiosity,
we can embark on a research project.
Similarly, we might wonder whether certain experiences—​say psyche-
delic experiences or traumatic experiences or experiences of awe or of the
fear of death (see Chapter 8)—​can lead directly to people becoming more
religious, or less so. This requires something more than a good measure of re-
ligiosity: we would also need a way to stimulate those experiences in people,
to see if they make a difference to their religiosity. But still, measurement is
necessary.
And so this extended introduction to psychological measurement—​and
to the psychological measurement of religiosity in particular—​is a way of
saying, tentatively, “yes,” to the question about whether psychologists can
study religion. Psychologists have developed various ways of measurement
various aspects of religiosity, and continue to do so.

Experimenting with religion

Now, a brief word about how I picked the seven experiments explored in the
rest of the book. My first criterion was simply that they had to be experiments
in which some aspect of religiosity is measured. This ruled out most of the
existing psychological studies about religion, which tend be correlational in
design. It also ruled out the large body of experimental research on religion
usually described as religious priming research. In these studies, participants
are reminded about religion, for example by showing them words like “god”
and “church” or by having them reflect momentarily about their religious
beliefs: they are then observed performing some other task, through which
their honesty or generosity or cooperativeness or some other such behavior
can be measured. Finally, I wanted to be able to talk to the original authors
of each study, and this sadly ruled out one of the most awesome psychology
experiments of all time, the Marsh Chapel Experiment, sometimes called the
Good Friday Experiment.22 Walter Pahnke performed this experiment as
 (How) can psychologists study religion? 19

his doctoral research, but he died in 1971, predeceasing his doctoral advisor
Timothy Leary, who died in 1996.
Just before a two-​ and-​a-​
half-​
hour Good Friday service at Boston
University’s Marsh Chapel in 1962, 20 seminarians were given a white pill
each. Ten of the pills contained psilocybin, an extract of magic mushrooms;
the other 10 contained a placebo, vitamin B3. None of them knew which
pill they had been given at first, but it did not take long before it became
pretty obvious. All 20 students were interviewed and given a questionnaire
about their experiences right after the service, as well as in the following
days, and finally six months later. The differences between the experiences
of the two groups of students were so obvious that they barely required sta-
tistical analysis.
Compared to the students who received the placebo, those who had taken
psilocybin had intense experiences that they described as transcendent, par-
adoxical, and ineffable. They lost their sense of individuality, and gained a
sense of being united with “ultimate reality.” They lost their sense of time, and
even space. They experienced awe and wonder. They felt profoundly happy,
even ecstatic, and sometimes expressed this joy in spiritual terms. But—​and
this is rarely mentioned in descriptions of the Good Friday Experiment—​
those who had taken psychedelics were no more likely than those who had
received placebos to experience the presence of God or intimacy with God;
they were not more likely to experience feelings of sacredness or holiness or
reverence. In other words, depending on how we define and measure “spir-
ituality” or “religiosity,” we might come away with a variety of conclusions
about the effects of psychedelics.23
None of the experiments we will now look at were as sensational as this
one, but they are arguably more relevant to understanding normal everyday
religion as most of us know it, without intense mystical experience and un-
aided by psychedelic drugs.24 They cover familiar religious themes: belief in
and about gods old and new, belief in creation or design in the natural world,
belief in the soul and its survival after death, and belief in the efficacy of rit-
uals. These are the things that religious traditions have in common, from the
so-​called world religions like Christianity and Buddhism to the traditions
that preceded them that we now know somewhat condescendingly as myths,
whether Greco-​Roman, Egyptian, Canaanite, or Chinese, to the new reli-
gious movements that emerge every so often with great enthusiasm, polit-
ically incorrectly referred to as cults by disapproving snobs with their own
ideological or theological axes to grind.
20 Experimenting with Religion

In each case, the experimenters want to understand where in our minds

religion comes from. To do so they have to dig deep into our minds and our
religious traditions that have, for better or worse, with greater or lesser suc-
cess, built their theological edifices on fertile psychological ground, if the
historical and cultural ubiquity of religion is any indication. Whether they
manage to do so, I leave up to you to judge.
 2
Does thinking cause atheism?

Design: Between-​subjects
Manipulate: Analytic thinking v. control
-​Thinker v. Discobolus
Measure: Belief in God
-​ self-​report

In the summer of 1880, the then relatively unknown sculptor Auguste Rodin
was commissioned to create a set of bronze doors for Paris’s planned Musée
des Arts Decoratifs. As his source material, he chose Dante’s Inferno, the first
part of The Divine Comedy, his epic poem about a soul’s journey to the after-
life. “Inferno” is Italian for Hell, and the doors were to represent its gates. How
the architects felt about their entrance being the gates of Hell, I do not know.
In any case, the museum itself was never built, and the doors were never cast
in the intended bronze during Rodin’s lifetime. Far from languishing away in
the artist’s file drawer, however, The Gates of Hell became the source of many
of Rodin’s most famous works, including his most famous free-​standing
sculpture, The Thinker, designed to perch just above the doors.
You might be familiar with the sculpture in question: a man is seated, bent
forward—​almost curled up—​right elbow planted into left thigh, his head
lowered onto the back of an open hand, his knuckles in his teeth. The cliché
is that he is pensive, lost in his thoughts. Rodin told the critic Marcel Adam
in 1904 that The Thinker was originally meant to represent Dante himself,
planning his great poem: this was certainly how it was initially interpreted
by art critics. Even after the project for the museum was abandoned, the idea
of The Thinker as a maker of things was retained: “He is not a dreamer, he is
a creator.”1 The kind of thinker he had in mind was a poet, an artist: even in
1888, when The Thinker was first displayed detached from The Gates of Hell,
Rodin called it Le Poète rather than Le Penseur.2 Ever since this first exhibi-
tion in Copenhagen, The Thinker has been known as a work separate from
The Gates, making his thoughts even more inscrutable. It is not clear now

Experimenting with Religion. Jonathan Jong, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190875541.003.0002
22 Experimenting with Religion

who this creator is, or what creation he is contemplating. If it is no longer

Dante, perhaps it is Rodin himself, surveying his masterpiece, reminiscent of
Christ on his judgment seat with the whole world in the dock. When Rodin
died in 1917 it was, at his request, a monumental cast of The Thinker that
overlooked the grave, where it sits still as headstone and epitaph.
Setting aside the kind of thinker he was, it was not initially The Thinker’s
intellect that captured the imagination of the art establishment but his phy-
sique: his sharply defined muscles are tense, clenched as if ready for sudden
motion. The coexistence in the same subject of brains and brawn, contempla-
tion and action, was controversial at the time, with some praising what they
saw as a message of social change and others criticizing what they saw as a lack
of nobility and decorum. But it would not be long before attention turned to
his thoughts, their unknowability allowing us to project our interests onto him.
Over the decades, images of The Thinker have been used to represent all kinds
of things and to advertise all kinds of products, from breakfast cereal to vodka
to toilets. They also grace countless posters and course books for undergrad-
uate courses in philosophy. Since 1931, a six-​foot-​tall bronze cast of Rodin’s
Thinker has occupied the lawn outside Columbia University’s Philosophy Hall.
Will Gervais knew none of this as he was designing his experiment, as a
doctoral student in Vancouver, Canada. All he wanted was something that
reminded people of thinking: thinking analytically in particular. If he could
find a way to put people into that frame of mind, he could then see if that had
any effect on their religious beliefs. In particular, Will wanted to see if ana-
lytic thinking would reduce religious beliefs. So, he ran an experiment to see
whether merely looking at pictures of The Thinker could make people less
religious.

Religion, intelligence, and thinking style

Will is now at Brunel University, just outside of London, but he grew up in

Colorado and started off at the University of Denver studying environmental
science and biology. By the time he was ready for graduate school, however,
he had decided to investigate the ways in which biological and cultural evolu-
tion come together to shape the way human beings think and behave. So, off
he went to the University of British Columbia to work with Ara Norenzayan,
who by then had already begun taking this biocultural evolutionary ap-
proach to the study of religion.
 Does thinking cause atheism? 23

The early-​and mid-​2000s—​before Will arrived in Vancouver—​saw the

publication of a slew of books about the evolutionary and psychological
underpinnings of religion. At that time, it seemed to Will that researchers
were all trying to explain the pervasiveness of religion. Religion is one of
those culturally universal phenomena, like language and music, and people
were interested in figuring out how it got that way. But Will wanted to know
why some people weren’t religious: after all, absence is as much in need of ex-
planation as ubiquity.
One common hypothesis is based on the idea that human beings are reli-
gious by default. This does not necessarily mean that we are “hardwired” to
believe in gods by our genetic makeup or our neurochemistry; it could just
mean most of us are born into cultures where religious ideas are very influen-
tial because they have, over the centuries, been woven into our social, polit-
ical, and moral norms. Regardless of how this happened, religion is the status
quo, and to be nonreligious is to have overridden this default. The ability and
tendency to think analytically might be one of the things that enables people
to shake off the psychological and social forces that usually make religious
beliefs so compelling to so many people.
Variations on this idea have been around for a long time, but it comes
into its own in the 19th century in the form of the conjecture that science
would eventually displace supernatural and superstitious beliefs. This ver-
sion of the theory—​found most forcefully in writings of the French phi-
losopher August Comte—​construes religious beliefs as primitive attempts
to explain and control natural phenomena. Given that this job is more
adequately done by the natural sciences, it is inevitable that religion will
decay as science and technology gain ascendancy. Throughout the 19th and
20th centuries, social scientists—​including Max Weber, Émile Durkheim,
and Karl Marx—​all composed their own variations and elaborations on
this theme.
As a prediction of demographic changes at societal levels, this hypothesis
has not held up well. Despite the massive advances in science, technology,
and education around the world since Comte’s day, there is no strong evi-
dence of religious decline at the global level. Whatever the effects are of sci-
entific modernization on religiosity, it is outweighed by other factors, such
as the difference in birthrates between religious and nonreligious families.
There may be numerically more atheists by the year 2050 than there are now,
but they will probably make up a smaller proportion of the world’s popula-
tion than they currently do.3
24 Experimenting with Religion

Still, there might be something to the psychological claim that underpins

the sociological prediction. Perhaps at the individual level, exposure to and
training in critical thinking or science might lead people to shrug off the re-
ligious beliefs with which they were brought up. There is, as it turns out, no
clear and consistent relationship between educational attainment—​typically
measured in terms of years of formal schooling—​and religiosity. In some
countries, like Ecuador and Serbia, people with no religious affiliation enjoy
higher levels of education. In other countries, like Malaysia and Tanzania,
people who are religiously affiliated enjoy higher levels of education; in yet
other countries, like the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, and China,
there isn’t much difference either way.4
Even though patterns within countries are varied, countries with higher
average levels of educational attainment do tend to be home to higher
proportions of nonreligious people: or, as social scientists say, there is a neg-
ative correlation between national educational level and national religiosity.
This might suggest that education undermines religion, but perhaps the pat-
tern is coincidental. Countries with high average educational attainment are
also wealthier, safer, and more stable than those of lower average educational
attainment, and all of these different traits are also associated with decreased
religiosity.5 We cannot say from correlations alone which of these variables—​
if any—​cause a decline in religiosity.
Perhaps general education level is too broad a factor to examine in any
case. Sociologists have also looked to see if professional scientists tend to be
less religious than the general population, and they are, though there is some
cross-​cultural variation here too: in Hong Kong and Taiwan, for example,
scientists seem to be more religious than other people.6 Without knowing
more about how professional scientists differ from other people—​in terms
of their upbringing, their socioeconomic situation, their personality, all of
which might contribute to someone’s religiosity—​it is difficult to know why
this gap exists between scientists and nonscientists. This comparison is too
blunt a tool for our purposes. If we want to know whether there are any inter-
esting psychological differences between religious and nonreligious people,
we have to measure them as directly as possible.
Assuming you were sufficiently convinced earlier that IQ tests are not
completely meaningless and that they measure, albeit imperfectly, general
cognitive ability, they are as good a place as any to begin. Previous research
suggests that being very intelligent predicts upward social mobility7: maybe
the ability to transcend our socioeconomic backgrounds also enables us to
 Does thinking cause atheism? 25

push back against any predispositions we might have toward religious belief.
Fortunately for us, there is a substantial body of evidence on this, though the
data are mostly from the United States and other Western countries.
Miron Zuckerman, a psychologist at the University of Rochester, and his
colleagues Jordan Silberman and Judith Hall recently gathered together 63
studies involving over 70,000 individuals and estimated from them that their
IQ was negatively correlated to religious belief.8 The estimated strength of
the correlation was around −0.2 to −0.25. Correlations can vary between −1
and 1, which imply perfect negative and positive relationships respectively; a
correlation strength of 0 means that the two variables are unrelated.
By way of comparison with another IQ-​related correlation, an earlier anal-
ysis based on 31 samples involving over 58,000 individuals—​again, mostly
from the United States and other Western countries—​estimated the positive
correlation between youth IQ and future income at 0.21.9 This correlation
strength is just about average in these kinds of meta-​analyses in psychology,
and is larger than many other correlations that we take for granted.10 For ex-
ample, we are widely advised to take aspirin when we suspect that we are
having a heart attack, but the correlation between taking aspirin and reduced
risk of death in this situation is a measly 0.02, 10 times weaker than the IQ–​
religiosity relationship.11
One interpretation offered by Zuckerman and colleagues of their findings
is the one we have been considering, and which piqued Will Gervais’s in-
terest. In their paper, Zuckerman, Silberman, and Hall write, “we propose
that more intelligent people tend to think analytically and that analytic
thinking leads to lower religiosity.”12 Cognitive psychologists mean some-
thing quite specific when they talk about analytic thinking. Being analytic
is not quite the same as being intelligent: it is a cognitive style rather than
purely a cognitive ability, though of course ability does come into it. Roughly
speaking, to think analytically is to think deliberately, and not to rely on our
unexamined immediate intuitions.13
As it is distinct from intelligence, analytic thinking is not measured with
an IQ test but with the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT)14 or a questionnaire
like the Rational-​Experiential Inventory (REI).15 The REI is basically a self-​
report personality test: it asks questions about our subjective preferences, for
which there are no “right” or “wrong” answers. In contrast, the CRT is much
more of an objective test in the same vein as an IQ test. However, it is a test
that most people would be able to pass, as long as they paused to think in-
stead of going with their initial impression.
26 Experimenting with Religion

Here’s an example, from cognitive scientist Shane Frederick’s original

paper on the CRT:

A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball.
How much does the ball cost?

The intuitive response—​which comes first to mind for most people—​is 10

cents. But, of course, this is wrong: if the ball cost 10 cents and the bat costs $1
more, it would cost $1.10, which would make the total cost $1.20 rather than
$1.10. The correct answer has to be 5 cents, which means that the bat costs
$1.05, bringing the total to the correct $1.10.
The most obvious problem with this task is that it looks like a measure
of mathematical ability and is in fact correlated with measures of numerical
ability.16 But not very much mathematical skill is required to arrive at the
correct answer: all it takes is simple addition and subtraction.17 As long as
people stop and think, they should get it right. That’s the idea, anyway. We do
not yet know very much about how people think through the test. Do they
actually suppress the intuitive response before arriving at the correct answer
via deliberation? Does deliberation usually lead to the correct answer? Some
recent research suggests that this picture is mistaken, and that some people
are just intuitively better at these tasks.18 If so, then the CRT is a measure of
cognitive ability after all, rather than of cognitive style. Psychological meas-
urement is hard.
For the sake of the argument, let us assume that the CRT is an adequate
measure of analytic thinking as cognitive psychologists understand it.
Having already seen that there is a negative correlation between IQ and reli-
giosity, we might want to know if CRT scores are also negatively associated
with religiosity.19 Gordon Pennycook and colleagues recently gathered to-
gether 31 different studies involving over 15,000 participants—​mostly from
the United States and Canada—​and estimated the correlation to be −0.18,
just a little lower than Zuckerman’s estimation of the intelligence-​religiosity
link.20

The Rodin experiment

Maybe it shouldn’t, but it always surprises me how different teams of

researchers seem to independently come up with very similar ideas at
 Does thinking cause atheism? 27

the same time. Before 2012, there was pretty much no published re-
search on analytic thinking and religiosity. Some studies on scientists’ re-
ligious beliefs and the intelligence–​religiosity correlation were available,
but nothing with the CRT. In 2012, three different teams—​led by Amitai
Shenhav at Harvard, Gordon Pennycook at the University of Waterloo, and
Will Gervais at the University of British Columbia, all doctoral students
at the time—​ published papers reporting CRT–​ religiosity correlations.
Shenhav’s paper was published first, while Will and his doctoral supervisor
Ara were revising their paper based on reviewers’ feedback. Pennycook’s
came next, followed by Will and Ara’s just a few weeks later, in the journal
Science, one of the world’s most prestigious scientific periodicals, founded
in 1880 with the financial backing of Thomas Edison and later Alexander
Graham Bell.
It is Will’s experiments that interest me most, rather than the correla-
tional findings his paper shared in common with the others. He wanted to
manipulate people’s thinking style—​to put them temporarily in an analytic
frame of mind—​to see if that would reduce their religious beliefs. It turns
out that there were a few ways that he could have gone about this: cog-
nitive styles seem easier to shift than, say, general intelligence. Education
can increase IQ test performance—​by 1 to 5 points for each additional
year of schooling21—​but manipulating it in a laboratory is quite a different
proposition.
He thinks he got the idea of using Rodin’s Thinker when an image of it
showed up on someone else’s presentation about analytic and intuitive
thinking. Scientific inspiration is often banal. But the Rodin study wasn’t the
first attempt. Before this, Will had read that just presenting words in a font
that is difficult to read—​faded, italicized, and so forth—​can put people into
an analytic mindset. The idea is that reading difficult fonts is effortful, which
encourages people to make the extra effort of thinking more deliberately. So,
the first experiment he ran involved two groups of participants who either
answered questions about their religious beliefs printed in difficult or normal
font: as hypothesized, he found that participants whose questionnaires were
difficult to read reported lower levels of religious belief than those whose
questionnaires were printed normally.
He also ran two other studies using a sentence unscrambling task, in which
participants are given a jumble of words that they are asked to turn into a
grammatically correct sentence by dropping one of the words and rearran-
ging the others. For example, participants may be presented with:
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
‘Open them, open them,’ cried Sally, ‘and tell me which you like the
best. I think they are all pretty, the prettiest presents I ever saw.’
When Aunt Bee untied the string—bright green string, Sally was glad
of that—and took off the paper, she thought just as Sally did, that
they were the prettiest presents she had ever seen.
‘You must put the duck in the water, Sally,’ said she, leading the way
into the house.
So Sally did. And away floated Master Duck under the pink roses,
looking as much at home as if he had spent all his days in Aunt
Bee’s white glass bowl.
‘Let us go upstairs and stand the soap baby where Uncle Paul will
see him the first thing to-night,’ said Aunt Bee next. ‘Do you mean
him to wash his hands with the baby, or is he only to stand and
smile at Uncle Paul?’
Sally placed the pink baby on the edge of the wash-basin where
Uncle Paul would be sure to see him.
‘I think,’ said Sally thoughtfully, ‘that to-morrow he may wash his
hands with the baby, but that the baby ought only to smile at him
to-night.’
‘I think so, too,’ agreed Aunt Bee. ‘Now suppose we go down on the
porch and break the peppermint stick and eat it.’
‘Oh,’ said Sally, ‘wouldn’t that be nice?’
So Sally and Aunt Bee sat down to a little feast which was very
refreshing to a person who had spent the morning shopping in town.
‘Isn’t it good candy?’ said Aunt Bee, passing it to Sally again.
‘Yes, it is good,’ answered Sally, carefully choosing a piece not too
small. ‘Which one of your presents do you think you like best, Aunt
Bee?’
‘All of them,’ said Aunt Bee promptly. ‘I like all three of them best.’
‘I don’t,’ said Sally, ‘I think the peppermint candy is the best present
of all.’
 CHAPTER VIII
WHAT THE TIDE BROUGHT IN

Father and Sally, Andy and Alice, were spending a morning down on
the rocks.
The tide was out, and the jagged, uneven, rocky shore lay brown
and dry under the hot summer sun. Soon the tide would turn and
roll in again, dashing up higher and higher over the rocks until every
one would be forced to run farther inland to escape the wash of the
waves and the dashing spray.
But now the rocks were well out of water, and over them climbed
Sally and Alice and Andy, hunting for treasures that the sea had left
behind in little pools and hollows everywhere.
‘Here is seaweed,’ called Sally, holding up the long, wet, brown
strands. ‘It is what the mermaids wear in their hair, Andy, you know.’
‘I don’t think my mermaid wore any,’ answered Andy, who still liked
to tell the story of how his mermaid, as he called her, had saved his
boat, ‘but then her green cap was very tight and I couldn’t see her
hair. Oh, Sally, Sally, what is this?’
Andy was dancing about a little pool as he pointed to something on
its edge, as excited as if he saw another mermaid rising from its
clear and shallow depths.
‘It is a crab,’ said Sally, laughing at Andy’s puzzled face, ‘a baby crab.
See him run.’
And Andy and Sally laughed happily together as the little crab
scuttled hastily away out of sight.
‘These are periwinkles,’ explained Sally, as she came upon Alice
gingerly poking with a stick a number of small gray shells. ‘That shell
is a house, and the periwinkle lives inside. When he goes walking he
carries his house on his back.’
‘Sit very still for a moment,’ said Father, who had come up behind
the little group, ‘and perhaps you will see the periwinkles walking
away.’
Sure enough, while Sally and Andy and Alice waited, scarcely
winking an eyelash nor drawing a long breath, the procession moved
slowly off, each periwinkle carrying his little gray house that did not
look unlike the gray houses of Seabury Town itself.
‘If they were walking in the sand, each one would leave a little track,
wouldn’t he, Father?’ said Sally, blowing upon the slowly moving
houses as if to make their tenants hurry along.
‘I shouldn’t like to live all alone in a house,’ said Andy. ‘I shouldn’t
like it at night.’
And Andy shook his head as he thought of his own little crib
standing close beside his mother’s big bed.
‘Poor little periwinkle,’ said tender-hearted Alice. ‘Do you think he is
ever lonely?’
‘No, indeed,’ answered Father. ‘See him walking off with his family
now. He will tell every one he meets what an exciting morning he
has had, how one little girl rapped on the roof of his house with a
stick and another one blew on him until it almost gave him a cold in
his head. Perhaps the periwinkles will give a party to-night and invite
the crabs to come and hear all about it.’
This made every one laugh, and Sally asked, ‘What will they eat at
the party?’
‘Jelly,’ answered Father promptly, ‘made by the jellyfish, of course.’
‘Oh, show us the jellyfish,’ cried Sally, jumping about on the rocks
until it seemed as if she must tumble down. ‘Show us the jellyfish,
Father.’
So Father led the way in the search for jellyfish, and when they were
found, lying in pools of water here and there, it was seen at once
that they had been well named.
‘They do look just like jelly,’ said Alice, ‘raspberry jelly, I think.’
‘But jelly doesn’t have “stingers,”’ objected Sally, keeping a
respectful distance from the jellyfish’s long, waving ‘arms,’ that
would ‘sting like a bee,’ she told her friends, if they went too near.
‘Here is a sea anemone,’ said Father, pointing to a rose-colored, star-
shaped form lying in a pool.
‘It looks like a flower,’ said Alice.
And so it did.
‘Touch it gently,’ said Father to Andy, who carried a little stick.
Very carefully Andy leaned over the pool, very gently he touched the
anemone, and in an instant what had looked like a full-blown,
brilliant flower now grew smaller and smaller, until it was not half its
former size.
‘I don’t want to touch it,’ said Alice, her hands behind her back, ‘but
I do want to fish. Miss Neppy said that if I brought a fish home she
would cook it for my dinner.’
Now Alice and Sally and Andy had come down to the rocks this
morning quite prepared to catch any number of fish.
Each one had a fishing rod made of a lilac switch out by Father from
the white-lilac bush that grew beside Sally’s kitchen door. And each
one had fastened to the rod a long piece of string, on the end of
which was tied a bent pin.
As they settled themselves in a row and prepared to fling their lines
into the sea, you might have noticed that behind each fisherman
stood a pail, a gay-colored tin pail used for digging in the sand, but
equally useful for carrying home a large catch of fish.
‘Did you ever catch anything?’ asked Andy of Sally, who had lived all
her life by the sea.
‘No, I haven’t yet,’ answered Sally truthfully, ‘but then I always think
I may.’
‘There are whales in the sea,’ volunteered Alice. ‘The Bible says so.
Oh, how I wish I could catch a whale and carry it home to surprise
Miss Neppy and Mother!’
‘Whales are too big to carry home,’ instructed Sally. ‘I have seen
pictures of them. Father, isn’t a whale too big for Alice to carry
home?’
But Father was now sitting back in the shade, reading his morning
paper, and the sound of Sally’s shrill little voice was carried away by
the breeze.
Near by the blue waves glittered and danced, while farther out at
sea sail-boats scudded before the wind, little motor boats chugged
busily past, and stately yachts moved slowly along, dazzling white in
the morning sun.
The fishermen fished on with never a bite, not even a nibble. They
drew in their lines, they bent their pins a-fresh, they tossed out their
lines again with many a whirl and twirl.
‘Do you think we will catch anything to-day?’ asked Andy, whose leg
had begun to have a ‘crick’ in it from sitting still so long.
But just then Alice uttered a cry and pointed out into the water.
‘Look! Look!’ cried Alice. ‘It is a fish, a fish out there in the water. It
is a whale, I know it is, a big blue whale.’
Sally and Andy followed Alice’s pointing finger. There on the surface
of the waves they could plainly see a number of objects, red and
blue, that seemed to be swimming toward them at a rapid rate.
‘They look like people’s heads,’ said Sally.
‘Perhaps they are mermaids,’ murmured Andy.
‘I think that first blue one is a whale,’ insisted Alice.
Now all the fishermen were so excited that they dropped their rods
and rose to their feet.
Sally waved her arms and called, ‘Father! Father!’
Andy and Alice could think of nothing better to do, so they, too,
waved their arms and shouted, ‘Father! Father!’ as loud as ever they
could.
Father heard. He folded his paper, and came slowly over the rocks
toward the excited little group.
Yes, Father, too, saw the red and blue objects bounding along,
dancing lightly over the waves, and, with the children, wondered
what they were.
The tide had turned. Each wave came higher up on shore, and
already an eager bather or two had waded out into the rising water.
Soon a boy bather, gay in his red bathing-suit, saw the objects at
which three pairs of hands were pointing and waving wildly. He
paddled toward them, as they bobbed about, red and blue, and then
with a laugh that made the children laugh, too, he set them
bounding faster than ever over the waves toward the spot where
Alice and Sally and Andy stood.
‘What are they? Oh, what do you think they are?’ asked Alice over
and over again. ‘Do you think they can be whales?’
‘No, I don’t,’ replied Sally, wisely shaking her head. ‘They don’t look
like whales to me. Why, I know what they are. They are balls!’
‘Balls?’ echoed Andy in a shout. ‘Oh, I love balls!’
And balls they were, great red and blue rubber balls, and what they
were doing, sailing alone over the ocean, was a question hard for
any one to answer.
The merry little boy bather waded back and caught the balls as they
came bounding in to shore. He handed them up to the children, a
red ball each to Andy and Sally, a big red ball, hard and full of
bounce, you could see, while Alice wanted the blue ball so badly that
she couldn’t help holding out her hands for it, so of course the boy
gave the blue ball to her.
‘Where did they come from?’ asked Sally and Andy in a breath.
As for Alice, she didn’t ask any questions. She was rubbing her blue
ball dry on her dress, with an extra loving little pat every now and
then.
‘I am sure I can’t guess,’ was Father’s answer. ‘Perhaps I shall hear
something about it later on. Play with them at any rate and have a
good time.’
Now you cannot bounce a ball on sharp pointed rocks, and Sally and
Andy and Alice, each holding a ball in his arms, were making ready
to scramble back to the mainland to try their new treasures, when
there was a loud shout from the water that made every one turn
round to see what it could mean.
A small motor boat was chuf-chuf-chuffing straight toward the point
where they stood. And a man was standing in the bow of the boat
waving his hat in the air and shouting at the top of his voice,
‘My balls! My balls! They are my balls! My balls!’
As Sally and Andy and Alice each held a ball, and even the merry
boy bather had an extra ball in his hand that had just come
bouncing gayly in on the waves, it was plain that the man was
talking to them.
So Father called back—he could do nothing else—‘If they are your
balls, come and get them.’
When Sally and Andy and Alice heard these words, they clutched
their balls very tightly as if they would never let them go.
But now Father was speaking again, for the man in the boat was
quite near.
‘How did your balls get in the water?’ called Father.
And the man shouted back, ‘The box they were in fell overboard and
the cover came off. I bought them for my shop over in Rockport, and
I was carrying them home when they fell overboard. I nearly lost a
box of tin horns, too.’
‘If you have a shop, perhaps you will sell these balls to me,’
suggested Father. ‘Would you like that ball you have?’ he asked the
boy bather.
But the boy bather shook his head.
‘No, I play baseball,’ said he.
And he tossed the ball he held back into the man’s boat.
‘I guess I can sell the balls to you,’ agreed the man, looking more
cheerful at once. ‘I am glad to make a sale anywhere.’
When Sally and Alice and Andy heard this, they prepared at once to
go home.
‘Let us put our balls into our pails,’ said Sally, ‘and bounce them
when we get home.’
So each ball was popped into a pail. They fitted nicely except that
they rose high over the top, round and plump and gay.
‘My pail is so full I am glad I left my shovel at home to-day,’ said
Sally, admiring the effect of her new red ball in her bright green pail.
‘Perhaps people will think we are carrying home fish,’ suggested
Andy, swinging his pail so hard it was well that his ball was a tight
fit.
‘Perhaps they will think it is a whale,’ said Alice hopefully. ‘I would
love to surprise Miss Neppy and my mother with a whale.’
‘Perhaps they will,’ said Sally kindly. ‘Anyway, it is the first time I ever
caught anything when I went fishing, and I am glad it is a ball and
not a fish, aren’t you?’
 CHAPTER IX
THE PERIWINKLE FAMILY

That night Sally couldn’t go to sleep.

She tossed and turned in her little white bed. She watched Snow
White’s wings move lazily to and fro on the window-sill. She had two
drinks of water. But still she couldn’t go to sleep.
‘Mother,’ called Sally, ‘Mother, I can’t go to sleep.’
So Mother came to smooth Sally’s pillow and to tuck in the bed
covers that were sadly tumbled and twisted about.
‘Shut your eyes,’ said Mother softly, with a hand on Sally’s forehead,
‘and think of little white sheep jumping over a wall, one after
another, one after another, until you fall asleep.’
Sally shut her eyes just as Mother said and tried to count the little
white sheep. But instead of jumping nicely over the wall, the little
white sheep ran round and round the field as fast as ever they
could, and this made Sally feel so wide awake that her blue eyes
flew open with a jerk and she sat straight up in bed.
‘Mother,’ she called again, ‘Mother, I want a drink of water.’
It was Father, not Mother, who came into Sally’s room this time, and
he must have known that Sally wanted company more than she
wanted a drink of water. For he lay down beside Sally on the bed
and took her hand in his.
‘Once upon a time,’ began Father, in the most comfortable kind of a
way, ‘there lived a family of Periwinkles under a rock on the edge of
the sand.’
Now a story was just what Sally had been wishing for, and at this
pleasant beginning she snuggled down in bed without a word and
closed her eyes, the better to enjoy the tale.
‘There was Mother Periwinkle,’ went on Father. ‘She stayed at home
and kept the house. There was Father Periwinkle, too. He scurried
round to find food for the family.’
‘I never saw a periwinkle scurry,’ interrupted Sally. ‘I thought they
could only creep.’
‘You never saw Father Periwinkle out hunting sand-bugs for dinner,’
was Father’s answer.
‘No, I never did,’ agreed Sally, with the tiniest kind of a yawn.
‘Then there were the children, Peri and Winkle,’ continued Father.
‘Peri was a sweet little girl and Winkle was a good little boy. That is,
he was almost always good. But one morning he woke up naughty. I
don’t know why, I am sure, but it was so.’
Sally nodded as if she understood. No doubt she did understand, for
sometimes the same thing happened to her.
‘What did he do naughty?’ she asked with interest.
‘Everything,’ replied Father, ‘everything he could think of to do. His
mother was hurrying round, cleaning up the house, because they
were all going to take dinner that day with Grandmother Periwinkle
who lived up the beach. But Winkle wouldn’t help his mother at all.
He might have dusted or straightened up the rooms. But he didn’t.
Instead, he kept standing in his mother’s way until twice she nearly
tripped over him and fell. Then when his little sister Peri was just
getting over a crying spell—’
‘What did she cry for?’ interrupted Sally again.
‘She cried when she was having her face washed,’ said Father, ‘for
she was like some little girls I know, only instead of saying that her
mother put soap in her eyes, she said salt, for of course she was
washed in salt water from the sea.’
‘Oh!’ said Sally, hiding her face on Father’s shoulder, ‘oh!’
‘Well, what do you think Winkle did to her then?’ asked Father.
‘I don’t know,’ said Sally eagerly, lifting her head. ‘What did he do?’
‘Why, instead of smiling at Peri and trying to keep her cheerful and
happy as any good little brother would,’ went on Father, ‘he put his
head in the air and called “Whimper-cat! Whimper-cat!” and stuck
his horns out at her, which for a periwinkle is just as bad as sticking
his tongue out is for a child.’
‘Oh,’ said Sally, delighted with Winkle’s naughtiness, ‘oh, I wouldn’t
do that, would I?’
‘No, indeed, you wouldn’t,’ replied Father. ‘Well, when Peri stopped
crying, and they were both washed and dressed and their horns
nicely curled, they started off. First Winkle crawled so fast that he
bumped into Peri and knocked her down. Her shell was all covered
with sand, and right there on the beach she had another crying
spell. You might think, now, he had done enough mischief. But while
his mother was brushing the sand off Peri with her horns, he gave
his little sister another push that toppled her over into a pool of
water.’
Sally drew a long breath. ‘Wasn’t he naughty?’ said she, giving
Father’s hand a little squeeze.
‘He was,’ said Father, ‘and this last push made Mother Periwinkle
very angry.
‘“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Winkle,” said she, severely.
“You know your sister sneezed three times last night. Do you want
to give her a cold in her nose? Answer me that.”’
‘Her nose,’ said Sally laughing. ‘I would like to see a periwinkle’s
nose.’
‘Well, that is what Mother Periwinkle said,’ went on Father. ‘Winkle
didn’t answer his mother at all. Instead, just to be disagreeable, he
began to creep as slowly as he could. He scarcely seemed to move.
He crept so slowly that Mother Periwinkle was afraid they would all
be late to dinner.
‘“I don’t know what your grandmother will say if we are late,” said
she, looking anxious. “Do hurry, Winkle. You are as slow as a snail.”’
‘Why, periwinkles are snails,’ spoke up Sally, opening her eyes in
surprise.
‘Of course they are,’ answered Father, ‘but Mother Periwinkle didn’t
think of that. Anyway, Winkle wouldn’t hurry. So, first, Mother
Periwinkle coaxed him.
‘“You are the quickest little Periwinkle I know. Let me see how fast
you can crawl, Winkle,” said she.
‘But that didn’t make Winkle hurry.
‘Then she scolded him.
‘“Shame on you, Winkle Periwinkle. How can you be so naughty?”
‘But that didn’t make Winkle hurry.
‘Then Mother Periwinkle thought she would give him a shaking. But
Winkle, in a flash, drew himself inside his shell where no one could
reach him, not even his mother. So after tapping on his shell with
her horns to let him know how naughty he was, Mother Periwinkle
and Peri moved along and left Master Winkle sitting alone on the
sand.
‘For a long, long time he sat there, just thinking of all he had done.
He was pleased that he had found so many naughty things to do.
But presently he began to feel hungry.
‘“I wonder what Grandmother will have for dinner,” thought he.
“Perhaps I had better go now. Peri will eat everything I like.”
‘Before he had time to start Winkle heard a Voice behind him, a big,
deep Voice that said,
‘“Move on, move on there. Move along at once.”
‘This made Winkle angry. He was a tempery little snail, you see. Who
could it be, talking to him in this rude fashion?
‘He moved round, shell and all, of course, to see who it was, but the
big Voice moved round, too, and kept behind Winkle no matter how
fast he turned.
‘Round and round went Winkle and round and round went the Voice,
still calling out,
‘“Move on, move on there, move on.”
‘Winkle was so angry that he made up his mind he would be saucy
and stick out his horns, when suddenly the Voice said something
that made him change his mind.
‘“Periwinkle Pie!” said the Voice. “Periwinkle Pie! Made of naughty
little Periwinkle boys. How I like Periwinkle Pie!”
‘For a moment Winkle Sat quite still.
‘“Periwinkle Pie?” said he to himself. “We never have Periwinkle Pie
at home. I have heard of Clam Pie and Lobster Pie and Fish Pie, but
never Periwinkle Pie.”
‘And then came the deep Voice again, “Periwinkle Pie! Made of
naughty little Periwinkle boys! Periwinkle Pie for dinner!”
‘Winkle didn’t wait to hear any more. He started off down the beach
toward Grandmother Periwinkle’s as fast as ever he could creep.
‘He made up his mind that if Grandmother asked him why he was so
late he would tell the truth and say he was sorry, for he didn’t mean
to be a naughty little Periwinkle boy any more.
‘Periwinkle Pie! Made of naughty little Periwinkle boys!
‘Ugh! The very idea made him shake inside his shell.
‘But good Grandmother Periwinkle didn’t ask any questions.
‘They were eating dessert, seaweed blanc mange and jelly-roll, when
Winkle came in, and he slipped into his seat and began to eat jelly-
roll, too, without saying a word.
‘“Won’t you have a little Clam Pie, Winkle?” asked Grandmother
politely.
‘Winkle grew quite pale and shook his head. The very thought of pie
made him feel ill.
‘Father Periwinkle was late to dinner, too. He came in soon after
Winkle, and he ate Clam Pie with relish, two shellfulls, for the
Periwinkles use shells, of course, instead of plates.
‘All the rest of the day Winkle was the very best little Periwinkle boy
along the shore.
‘That night before he went to sleep he told his mother what had
happened to him, and whenever after that he began to be naughty,
all Mother or Father Periwinkle had to say to him was “Periwinkle
Pie!” to turn him into a good little Periwinkle boy again.’
‘What was the big Voice?’ asked Sally sleepily.
Her eyes were closing and opening and closing again.
‘It was his own father,’ was Father’s reply. ‘Mother Periwinkle met
him on the way to Grandmother’s and told him how badly Winkle
was behaving. So Father Periwinkle crept up behind him and talked
in a deep bass voice that Winkle didn’t know at all.’
‘His own father,’ murmured Sally, too sleepy to be surprised. ‘Now
tell me—tell me—’
‘I will tell you good-night,’ said Father softly, as he slipped out of the
room.
And Sally didn’t answer, for she was sound asleep.
 CHAPTER X
THE PINK-AND-WHITE APRON

Alice had a toothache. At least she had had a toothache, but now
the pain was gone, leaving her with a swollen cheek twice as plump
as it ought to be.
Alice quite enjoyed her too plump face. When she looked in the
mirror she couldn’t help smiling, her face was so droll. And her smile
was so funny, so twisted, so ‘fat,’ that Alice just couldn’t help smiling
again.
As for Sally, she laughed outright at Alice’s face when she came over
to play that afternoon.
‘This is the way you look,’ said she, plumping out both cheeks like
two red balloons.
In spite of all the laughing and the fun, Alice didn’t feel yet like
playing lively games.
Her mother had gone to the city, shopping, and Alice, after a little
nap, had been sitting quietly downstairs with Miss Neppy until Sally
came over to play.
But when Sally did come, Alice didn’t feel like romping in the garden,
nor going down to the beach, nor even swinging in Sally’s big red
swing. So she and Sally settled down, with a picture book between
them, in the kitchen where Miss Neppy was ironing aprons.
Sally was always interested in Miss Neppy’s aprons, and it was
because she wore so many of them. Yes, all at one time, Miss Neppy
would wear as many as four or five aprons, and Sally knew quite
well, by now, what each apron meant.
First of all, just over her dress, Miss Neppy wore a small, fine, white
apron, trimmed with lace she had made herself, and often with
pockets ornamented by tiny bows of pale lavender ribbon. This was
her very best apron, quite nice enough to wear when the minister
came to call.
Over the small white apron Miss Neppy would tie a large, full, white
one, with three fine tucks above the hem. This was the apron in
which Miss Neppy would knit or sew or even sit and talk with her
friends.
Above this white apron came a stout one, perhaps of white with little
blue dots or rings, or perhaps with gay bunches of pink or blue
posies. In this apron Miss Neppy did her dusting, her bed-making,
her shelling of peas and stringing of beans.
While, last of all, came a dark blue-and-white gingham apron that
covered little Miss Neppy all round about and was meant for cooking
and washing, for digging in the garden and for scrubbing the floors.
As I say, Sally had grown to know the proper use of each apron, and
she knew, too, that Miss Neppy would not feel completely dressed
unless she had the right apron on at the right time. Sally had often
watched her slip out of her gingham and her dotted aprons when a
neighbor knocked at her door, and once she had seen Miss Neppy
untie three aprons in the twinkling of an eye and, neat and trim,
shake hands with the minister who had come to call.
This afternoon Miss Neppy was ironing aprons, and for this work she
wore a white apron covered closely with fine dark blue dots.
Thump, thump went the iron, with an occasional hiss! when Miss
Neppy tested it with a Wet forefinger to see whether it were hot
enough or no. The pile of ironed aprons grew higher and higher, and
Sally and Alice looked up every now and then from the picture book
to watch it grow.
‘You must have more than a hundred aprons, Miss Neppy,’ said Sally,
watching Miss Neppy unroll and shake out a dampened apron
covered over with bright pink flowers.
‘That is the prettiest apron of all,’ thought Sally to herself.
‘Oh, no, Sally,’ replied Miss Neppy, looking at the little girl over her
spectacles, ‘I have nothing like a hundred aprons. Why, I should
think it was wicked to have as many as that.’
Presently Miss Neppy finished her ironing.
‘I’m going into the garden to pick beans for dinner, children,’ said
she.
So she tied about her waist a dark blue-and-white checked apron
that covered her all round, and with her basket on her arm went into
the garden that sloped down the steep hill toward the sea.
‘I think I will go upstairs and bring down Jack Tar,’ said Alice. ‘I
haven’t seen him since last night when I went to bed with
toothache.’
So Sally was left alone.
She walked round the kitchen that she knew almost as well as her
own, and looked out of the window at Miss Neppy’s head and back
bending over the green rows of beans. Then she eyed the high pile
of aprons left on the table to air. On top of the pile lay the pink-and-
white apron, ‘the prettiest one of all.’
The next thing Sally knew she had taken the pink-and-white apron
from the pile, had unfolded it, and was shaking it out.
Of course she knew she shouldn’t touch Miss Neppy’s apron. She
knew it as well as you or I. But in spite of this, she first held the
apron up before her, and then, finding that it dragged upon the floor,
she flung it round her shoulders like a cape, and swept about the
room with the cape flying out behind.
What fun it was! How fine she felt! When Alice came downstairs she,
too, must borrow an apron and they would play ‘lady come to see.’
Round the room whirled Sally again, laughing as she went. But, alas!
for Sally and her fun!
Somehow the pink-and-white apron caught on the iron latch of the
stairway door, there was a sharp sound of tearing, and frightened
Sally looked round to see a long strip of the apron hanging limp and
loose from the rest of the hem.
She had torn Miss Neppy’s apron! What should she do?
Sally didn’t stop to think. If she had, she would have known that the
only thing for her to do would be to go straight to Miss Neppy in the
garden and tell her just what had happened.
But Sally didn’t do this.
She took off the apron in a flash, she rolled it into a ball, and then
she tucked it away in the lowest drawer of Miss Neppy’s dresser,
hidden under a pile of napkins and the big kitchen roller towel.
She was just in time, for downstairs came Alice, smiling and
laughing and ready now for fun.
‘I have been making new faces upstairs, in front of Mother’s mirror,’
said she. ‘Look, can you do this?’
But Sally wouldn’t try the new faces, nor even laugh nor smile.
‘I feel sick,’ said Sally. ‘My throat hurts. I want to go home.’
So Sally went home. She couldn’t run fast enough, she wanted so
badly to whisper in Mother’s ear the dreadful thing she had done.
But Mother had company, two strange ladies, who stayed until Sally
thought they never meant to go.
And, somehow, when at last she and Mother were alone, Sally didn’t
feel like telling. When Father came home, Sally didn’t feel like telling
him, either.
She couldn’t eat her dinner. Her throat hurt, she said. She couldn’t
swallow. She couldn’t speak.
She sat alone on the doorstep with Paulina in her arms, and was
really glad when Mother called her to come in to bed.
Once in bed, Sally lay and tossed.
Why hadn’t she told Miss Neppy? Miss Neppy wouldn’t scold. Sally
was not afraid of that. Did Miss Neppy know yet about the apron?
Had she found it, tucked away in the lowest dresser drawer?
Perhaps Miss Neppy would come straight over the moment the
apron was found. She might be coming over that very night. Perhaps
she would say that Mother must buy her a new pink-and-white
apron. Did such aprons cost very much? Sally didn’t know.
Perhaps, too, when Mrs. Burr heard of it, she would not allow Alice
to play with Sally any more. And would Miss Neppy ever love Sally
after this? If she thought it was wicked to have one hundred aprons,
what would she think of a little girl who tore one and didn’t tell!
Oh, if Sally had only told Mother and Father! If only they knew!
Oh, oh, oh!
Sally was crying and choking, when suddenly she slipped out of bed.
Downstairs she started, tumbling over her long nightgown, slipping
and catching the banisters at every step.
In astonishment Father looked up from his paper and Mother from
her sewing to see Sally in the doorway, the tears rolling down her
cheeks.
‘I tore Miss Neppy’s apron,’ sobbed Sally. ‘I tore it and I hid it in the
dresser drawer. I played with her apron, and I tore it and I didn’t
tell.’
And Sally fairly danced up and down, she felt so miserable and
unhappy about it all.
But after a moment or two, with Sally safe on Father’s lap, and
Mother kneeling on the floor, holding both hands in hers, Sally was
able to stop crying and to tell all that had happened that afternoon.
When she had quite finished, Father said, ‘Suppose we go straight
over to Miss Neppy’s and tell her now.’
Sally nodded. It was just what she wanted to do.
So Mother ran for Sally’s slippers and long blue coat, and Father
carried her over the way to where Miss Neppy sat alone by her front
window, rocking and knitting and humming a little song.
Miss Neppy, when she heard Sally’s story, was very much surprised.
‘Land sakes!’ exclaimed Miss Neppy, ‘I never missed that apron when
I put the others away. And I left it on the top of the pile, too,
because, when I ironed it, I saw that the hem was ripped. Go get
the apron, Sally, and let us look at it, do.’
Out of the lowest dresser drawer Sally pulled the apron, all crumpled
into a ball. And, would you believe it, when Sally and Miss Neppy
and Father looked at it, the apron was not torn at all, the hem was
only ripped. It seemed too good to be true.
‘Mother will mend it,’ said Sally joyfully. ‘She told me to bring it home
with me. Mother will mend it, Miss Neppy.’
And Sally put both arms about Miss Neppy’s neck and gave her a
tight, tight hug.
In the morning, bright and early, Sally ran over to Miss Neppy’s
again, with the apron nicely mended and freshly ironed in her arms.
‘Next time I will tell the very first thing, Miss Neppy,’ said Sally,
smiling up into her friend’s face.
Miss Neppy smiled back.
‘I would,’ said she. ‘Never keep a secret like that again. And, Sally,
there is a peach for you on the window-sill. Don’t spill it on your
dress.’
 CHAPTER XI
LITTLE RED RIDINGHOOD’S SISTER

The postman was coming up the street and Sally stood on the
doorstep waiting for him.
His whistle sounded loud and shrill, slowly, house by house, he drew
near, and at last with a smile and a tap on Sally’s head, he put a
letter into her hands and bade her give it to her mother before she
lost it.
This was an old joke between the postman and Sally that never
failed to make them both laugh.
‘Just as if I would lose a letter,’ thought Sally to herself as she went
into the house, ‘when I am almost six years old.’
‘Mother,’ she called, climbing the stairs, ‘Mother, here is a letter for
you.’
And as Mother dropped her sewing into her lap, Sally placed the
letter squarely in her mother’s hands.
‘There now,’ said she with a triumphant nod, ‘I didn’t lose that letter,
did I?’
Mother absently shook her head. She was reading her letter and
smiling as she read.
‘Who wrote it?’ asked Sally, pressing against Mother’s knee.
‘Aunt Sarah Waters,’ was Mother’s reply.
‘My Aunt Sarah?’ demanded Sally. ‘What does she say about me,
Mother? What does she say about me?’
‘She is writing about your birthday,’ answered Mother. ‘She has made
a funny mistake. She thinks that to-morrow is your birthday, Sally,
instead of a whole month away. And she wants you to buy your own
birthday present this year, because she is in the country, far away
from any shop, and cannot buy it for you herself.’
Sally’s face grew very bright. A present from Aunt Sarah, and a
present that she might choose her very own self! She leaned
forward suddenly and placed a kiss on Mother’s chin. She was so
happy she felt that she must do something to show it.
‘What shall I buy, Mother?’ asked Sally, her cheeks red with
excitement. ‘What shall I choose? I want a tea-set and a doll’s piano
more than anything else, but I would like a farmyard, too, with little
cows and pigs and ducks like the new one Alice has, or perhaps a
big bag full of marbles like Andy’s. I could shoot marbles just as well
as Andy. I know I could.’
‘We will think about it,’ answered Mother. ‘There is plenty of time. It
is a whole month, four long weeks, before your birthday, remember.’
‘But, Mother,’ began Sally, in great surprise, ‘but, Mother, I shan’t
wait a whole month for my present, shall I? Won’t we go and buy it
to-morrow? I don’t want to wait, Mother. I don’t, I don’t.’
Sally’s face was no longer bright. It had clouded over, and her under
lip was thrust out as if she might be going to cry.
‘Why, Sally,’ answered Mother gently, ‘I hardly know what to say. To-
morrow isn’t your birthday, you know. If you bought a present now
from Aunt Sarah you wouldn’t have one when the real birthday
came.’
‘Yes, I would, Mother,’ urged Sally, winking hard. ‘I would have the
one I would buy to-morrow. I won’t lose it or break it or let Tippy
play with it. I will be so careful. Aunt Sarah wants me to buy it to-
morrow. She says so in her letter. You know she does.’
Sally gazed so anxiously up into her mother’s face that Mother
thought for a moment and then said cheerfully,
‘This is what we will do, Sally. To-night we will tell Father all about it
and whatever he says we will do. Now run over to Aunt Bee’s with
this card of buttons. She left them here yesterday. And don’t stay
too long, Sally. Come home soon.’
What would Father say to-night? Was she to buy her present now or
to wait four long, long weeks? Sally could think and talk of nothing
else.
‘If I am very good all day long, don’t you think Father will say, “Buy
your present now?”’ Sally asked Aunt Bee, and Aunt Bee thought it
likely that he would.
Then Sally went over to visit Alice, and she and Alice talked and
talked about the present that might be bought the very next day.
‘A tea-set,’ said Alice at once. ‘I don’t think there is anything nicer
than a tea-set. And do try to choose one with pink flowers. Pink
flowers are the prettiest of all.’
Sally did want a tea-set, but, oh! think of a doll’s piano!
‘A trunk would be nice for the dolls,’ suggested Sally, ‘only I haven’t
many clothes to put in it, and I would like a rolling-pin and a wash-
tub and some teeny, tiny clothes-pins, too. I wish it was night, don’t
you, Alice? Don’t you wish Father was home now?’
But, to-night, of all nights in the year, Father didn’t come home to
dinner at all. He telephoned Mother that he would not be home until
long past Sally’s bedtime. So Sally was forced to go to bed without
knowing what Father’s answer would be.
But the next morning she woke to find Mother standing at her
bedside, and before Sally could ask a single question she knew by
Mother’s smiling face that she was to buy her present now.
‘Yes, we are to go into the city to-day,’ said Mother, ‘to buy your
birthday present.’
At this news Sally was so happy that she could scarcely speak a
word.
She left her chair at breakfast three times to hug Father close, and,
if she could, she would have hurried Mother off to the train an hour
before it started.
Once on the train there was so much to be seen from the window
that Sally had little time to talk.
Green meadows, fields of corn, a brook with cows knee-deep in the
shade. Over a bridge, through a dark tunnel, with every now and
then a glimpse of the sparkling sea.
On and on thundered the train. Sometimes it would stop at a small
village station to let an old woman with a basket climb on or off.
Sometimes it roared its way into a smoky town, the streets lined
with brick buildings and filled with people moving to and fro.
Then came the marshes, covered with pale green grasses and
rushes, with pools of water that gleamed white in the sun.
Last of all, the city, the great bustling city, with its dashing
automobiles and heavy trucks, its crowds of people, its haste and
confusion and noise.
Sally held fast to Mother’s hand. If she let go, even for a moment,
Mother might be swallowed up in the crowd, and then how would
Sally ever find her way home again?
‘Do you think all these people have little boys and girls like me at
home?’ asked Sally, as she and Mother made their way through the
crowd toward the big shops where you might buy almost anything in
the world.
‘A great many of them have,’ answered Mother, ‘and some of them
have brought their little boys and girls with them to town.’
Sure enough, directly in front of Sally walked a little boy wearing a
blue sailor suit, and not far away she spied a little girl with long
yellow curls.
‘I see them,’ said Sally. ‘I wonder whether they would buy a tea-set
or a piano or a farmyard for a birthday present, if they had an Aunt
Sarah to give them one. Would you stop and ask them, Mother, if
you were me?’
‘No, indeed,’ said Mother. ‘I would rather go into this shop and look
at the toys for sale.’
In the store entrance Mother paused to let Sally look in the shop
window. It was filled with stiff figures of women, wearing silk
dresses and fancy hats, and with gay scarfs thrown about their
necks. They all had pretty, smiling faces and very pink cheeks and
lips. Sally thought they were beautiful.
‘Are they dressed for a party?’ she asked.
‘They look as if they were,’ answered Mother.
‘Perhaps a birthday party,’ suggested Sally. ‘Oh, Mother, look, look!’
Sally gave Mother’s hand a violent shake, for from within the store a
man was lifting into the show window the figure of a little girl. She
was dressed in a neat dark blue frock. Upon her feet were shining
brown shoes. Her hands were outstretched in a most friendly
fashion.
But what made Sally’s cheeks grow pink and her eyes very bright
were the cape and hood worn by the figure of the little girl. It was a
scarlet cape, a gay scarlet cape, and fastened to it was a round hood
that pulled snugly up over the little girl’s head.
As Sally looked at the cape she thought she had never seen anything
so beautiful in all her life.
She looked and she looked and she did not say a word. She saw
how the stiff brown curls of the little figure were pulled out so
prettily from under the close hood. Just so her own yellow hair
would peep out, if only the cape belonged to her. She liked the way
the cape folded back and showed the front of the dark blue frock. It
is true that Sally had no dark blue dress at home, but surely a white
one would look just as well.
Then Mother turned to go and Sally spoke.
‘Mother,’ said Sally, ‘I don’t want a tea-set and I don’t want a piano. I
want a cape for my birthday present.’
‘A cape?’ said Mother in surprise. ‘Do you mean a red cape like the
one in the window? Why, you don’t need a cape, Sally. Come
upstairs now, and look at the toys.’
‘I want a cape,’ persisted Sally. ‘Aunt Sarah said I might choose my
present myself.’
‘So you shall,’ answered Mother. ‘But come and look at the toys first.’
So upstairs went Sally, and round and round the toy department she
and Mother walked. Sally had never seen so many toys before in all
her life.
She saw tea-sets and tea-tables, stoves and pianos. She saw dolls
and their carriages, their cribs, their bureaus, and even their
bathtubs. She saw toy animals and games, doll-houses, trains, and
boats. There were picture books and painting sets, there were balls
and blocks. There were really no toys made for a little girl’s pleasure
that Sally did not see.
When they had walked all round the room Mother said, ‘Well, Sally,
what will you choose?’
And Sally’s answer was, ‘Please, I want a cape.’
So Mother and Sally went downstairs in the store to buy a cape.
‘Suppose they haven’t one left,’ thought Sally.
But the saleswoman pulled out a rack hung with scarlet capes, and
in a trice she had fastened one round Sally’s neck that proved a
perfect fit. The hood was pulled up round her head and that, too,
fitted nicely. Sally noticed, as she stood before the long mirror, that
her hair peeped out from under the hood just as did the curls on the
little figure in the window downstairs.
‘Will you wear it home or shall we have it put in a box?’ asked
Mother, smiling to see Sally’s delight.
‘I will wear it, please,’ answered Sally in a whisper.
She was too happy to speak out loud.
All the long day spent in the city Sally wore her scarlet cape. She
trudged happily along at Mother’s side, in and out of the shops, up
and down in the great store elevators. She walked until her shoes
felt as heavy as if made of wood. She was so tired that she slept all
the way home on the train.
LITTLE RED RIDINGHOOD’S SISTER
But when Father met them at the Seabury Station she was wide
awake, and turned proudly round and round so that Father might
see her birthday present from every side.
‘Well, I declare,’ said Father at last, ‘you look just like little Red
Ridinghood’s sister.’
‘Do I?’ said Sally, smiling up at Father as pleased as could be. ‘Do I?
But then, who is the wolf?’
‘Why, Tippy, of course,’ answered Father, smiling back.
‘Oh, oh!’ said Sally, squeezing Father’s hand. ‘Will you write and tell
Aunt Sarah about it, about the cape and little Red Ridinghood’s
sister, and the wolf?’
‘Yes, I will,’ promised Father. ‘I will write to her to-night.’
‘But, Father,’ said Sally, after a moment, ‘will you tell her that Tippy is
a good wolf, that he is not bad? Tell her that he is a good wolf most
times.’
‘Yes, I will write that, too,’ agreed Father. ‘But what shall I tell her
about Red Ridinghood’s sister? Is she good or bad?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Sally, turning bashful. ‘Mother, what shall Father
say about me?’
‘Well,’ answered Mother thoughtfully, ‘I think little Red Ridinghood’s
sister is like her wolf, Tippy, good most times, too.’
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