What is syncretism in simple words with examples in psychology

There is a concept in psychology that is an integral part of children's perception and thinking - this is syncretism. Everyone knows that a child is born like a blank sheet of paper, his sensations and perceptions have no experience, memory, thinking and imagination are not yet developed. But the development of the baby’s psyche will rapidly be enriched with new skills and experience. The physiological and psychological development of a child are closely related; this should be taken into account when considering such a concept as syncretism.

In this article:

What is syncretismSigns of syncretismThe main feature of syncretismIntellectual development and syncretismEgocentrism and syncretism

What is syncretism

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Syncretism is a mental function of a child’s thinking, which appears in a generalized connection of objects and objects without common signs and grounds. Surely parents could observe how their child thought about this or that question, and his judgments were based only on the knowledge that he possessed due to his age.

In fact, at an early age, namely in preschool and primary school age, the child is not yet subject to some mental operations, and he uses what has already been mastered. Syncretism manifests itself as a certain intermediate moment in the process of formation and development of intelligence.

Notes

The Oxford English Dictionary
first confirms the word
syncretism
in English in 1618.
Kendall and Ahmed Mohamed 2021, pp. 34 and 94. sfn error: no target: CITEREFKendallAhmed_Mohamed2016 (help)
Torok 2002, paragraph 158. sfn error: no target: CITEREFTörök2002 (help)
Ferdinando, C. (1995). "Illness and Syncretism in the African Context" (PDF). In Anthony Billington; Tony Lane; Max Turner (ed.). Mission and Meaning: Essays Presented to Peter Cotterell
. Paternoster Press. ISBN 978-0853646761.
Ferdinando, Keith (1995). "Illness and Syncretism in the African Context". In Billington, Anthony; Turner, Max (ed.). Mission and Meaning: Essays Presented to Peter Cotterell
(PDF). Paternoster Press. item 272. ISBN 978-0853646761. Received 2018-06-30. The Christian faith inevitably assimilates into the existing structures of thought of its adherents, regardless of their culture. However, there are points in which the worldview of any people is found to be incompatible with the central elements of the gospel; if conversion to Christianity is anything more than purely nominal, it will necessarily entail a significant change in the traditional worldview in such cases. Where this does not happen, it is the Christian faith that is modified and thus relativized by the worldview, and the consequence of this is syncretism. […] The term “syncretism” […] is used here to replace or modify central elements of Christianity with beliefs or practices introduced from other sources. The consequence of such a process is a fatal threat to its integrity.
Peter J. Klaus and Margaret A. Mills, Folklore of South Asia: An Encyclopedia
: (Garland Publishing, Inc., 2003).
Jerry Bentley, Encounters in the Old World: Intercultural Contact and Exchange in the Pre-Modern Era
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), viii.
Din-i Ilahi - Britannica Online Encyclopedia[ verification required
]
Roy Chowdhury, Makhan Lal (1997) [First published 1941], Din-i-Ilahi, or the Religion of Akbar
(4th ed.), New Delhi: Oriental Reprint, ISBN 978-81-215-0777-6 [
verification required
]
Roy Chowdhury, Makhan Lal (1997) [First published 1941], Din-i-Ilahi, or the Religion of Akbar
(4th ed.), New Delhi: Oriental Reprint, ISBN 978-81-215-0777-6 [
verification required
]
“Why we should include less Mughal history in school textbooks.”[ verification required
]
"Finding Tolerance in Akbar, the Philosopher King."[ verification required
]
Blurton, T. Richard. Hindu art
. Harvard University Press. paragraph 94.

Signs of syncretism

The main characteristics and signs of syncretism in a child’s thinking are as follows:

A child's judgment about an object comes down to its external perception.

The resulting impression relates to the connections of this object and acts as its characteristics.

The mental functions of a child act inseparably.

A child's inference involves perception, impression, and memory in one inextricable pattern. For a more clear example, it is worth recalling the experiment that psychologists conducted on the topic of syncretism.

Giphy

Children were asked to look at a model of nature with a memorable landscape, after which they were asked to choose an image of this landscape from several photographs that would fully correspond to the view opening in front of them. But when he was asked to find a photo of nature that another child who was sitting opposite him had seen, he definitely chose “his” photo.

Inability to reason logically, which is based on true knowledge.

This characteristic confirms that in mental operations the child still relies on an external impression of a situation or object, since he is not able to link all actual connections into one scheme.

One way or another, syncretism is an integral part in the intellectual development of a child, and this mental function undergoes repeated transformation throughout the child’s development, right up to adolescence.

The main feature of syncretism

The main feature of this psychological function is its subjectivity. A child sometimes gives conclusions that are incredible and funny for adults, which always come exclusively from his own point of view.

This function loses its strength only in the process of mental transition from subjectivity to objectivity. So, for example, a child has the idea that large objects and things are heavy, and small ones, on the contrary, are light. A small pebble in the hands of a child seems very light, but when he throws it into the water, he drowns, since it is heavy for water.

It is almost impossible to explain the objectivity of this phenomenon to a child of early and preschool age. He, of course, can learn this from a specific example and remember it, perhaps he will repeat and share his impressions with interest, but he will not be able to understand that there is a certain pattern, connection and true meaning of this process. Just as he will not be able to apply this knowledge to the example of other things and objects.

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Intellectual development and syncretism

Human intellectual development goes through different stages in a given age period. It is pointless to compare the intelligence of a child and an adult, since it is obvious that in childhood all thought processes have not yet been formed, and the functions of logic have not been mastered.

Parents need to know that at each age stage, one or another psychological cognitive process is formed in the child, and new opportunities and abilities are actively used in real life.

Psychologists and teachers call this period sensitive – that is, optimally adapted for the development of a particular psychological function. As an example, consider the following situations:

A child’s speech develops between the ages of 1 and 3 years.

In other words, everyone understands that it is at this age that a person’s speech apparatus begins to develop.

Between 4 and 6 years of age, a child has an ideal period for the development of voluntary memory.

Photo by cottonbro: Pexels
Of course, many of these processes go unnoticed by parents, but if during this period you provide help and support for the development of this function, then the next stages of memory formation will be more successful and effective.

From 3 to 7 years, a child develops self-awareness.

Most mothers and fathers have heard about the crises of 3 and 7 years old, since it is at this age that you can hear: “I myself,” “I will do it my way,” etc. Stubbornness at this age is pronounced, as the child begins to separate himself from others and tries to find his own boundaries.

The stages of development of thinking in a child are constantly in transition from one type of thinking to another, from visual-effective thinking to visual-figurative, and ultimately to verbal thinking.

This topic of the sensitive period is raised for a reason: parents should know that syncretism occurs from early childhood to adolescence. In this case, there is no point in indicating the exact age, since for each person the development of mental functions can take place in a certain age interval.

As long as a child’s thinking is in the form of a visual-figurative one, syncretism will manifest itself in full, since otherwise his mental processes are not capable of processing information.

A child, in fact, like an adult, has his own specific patterns of action, it is they that allow a person to solve the tasks assigned to him. It is worth understanding that the pattern of action in a baby and a child already 3 years old is significantly different, which means that thinking has already acquired new functions.

Photo by Artem Podrez: Pexels

While the child’s cognition is actively developing, he will carry out various manipulations with objects and establish the simplest connections, and there will be syncretism in his thinking.

Cultures and societies

Main article: Moral syncretism

According to some authors, “syncretism is often used to describe the product of the large-scale imposition of one alien culture, religion, or set of practices on another already existing.”[6] Others, such as Jerry H. Bentley, however, have argued that syncretism also helped create cultural compromise. This provides an opportunity to experience the beliefs, values and practices of one cultural tradition and to engage with different cultural traditions. This transfer of ideas is usually only successful when there is resonance between both traditions. Although, as Bentley argues, there are numerous cases where extensive traditions have won popular support in foreign countries, this is not always the case.[7]

Mughal Empire

In the 16th century, a new religion emerged called Din-i Ilahi (literally "Religion of God")[8][9] was proposed by the Mughal Emperor Akbar in 1582 AD, intending to unite some elements of the religions of his empire and thereby reconcile the differences that divided his subjects.[10] The elements were mainly taken from Islam and Hinduism, but some others were also taken from Christianity, Jainism, and Zoroastrianism.

Akbar the Great holds court, discussing theology.

More like a cult of personality than a religion, it had no scriptures, no priestly hierarchy and had fewer than 20 disciples, all of whom were handpicked by Akbar himself. It is also accepted that the sul-i-kul

, which formed the essence of Din-i Ilahi, were accepted by Akbar as part of the general imperial administrative policy.
Sulh-i-Kul
means "universal peace".[11][12]

During the Age of Enlightenment

The modern, rational, non-pejorative connotations of syncretism perhaps go back to Denis Didros Encyclopedia

articles:
Eclecticism
and
Syncrétistes, Hénotiques, ou Conciliateurs.
Diderot portrayed syncretism as a harmonization of eclectic sources.
Scientific or legal approaches to addressing all claims of critical thinking generated much literature at this time in Europe and America studying non-European religions, such as Edward Moore. The Hindu Pantheon
of 1810,[13] much of it was almost evangelical gratitude, embracing spirituality and creating space and tolerance, in particular the abolition of religion (or its stronger form, official secularization, as in France), whereby believers of spiritualism, agnosticism, atheists, and in many cases more innovative or pre-Abrachemical religions could promote and spread their belief system both within and outside the family.

Egocentrism and syncretism

Both of these concepts can be safely called general characteristics of children's thinking. The child is in a special position when all his conclusions and the thought process itself are built exclusively from his point of view, which is the only and absolute one.

The syncretic thinking of a child is precisely characterized by the fact that all his ideas are based on subjective patterns of action. This means that thinking is still devoid of logic, the ability to analyze and synthesize objective connections between things and objects.

While egocentrism is fully manifested, the child does not have the ability to resort to objective connections between objects; his thinking will work exclusively on his subjective patterns of action. Egocentricity in thinking and practical activities will persist until 7-8 years.

Gradually, the child acquires the ability to select and analyze syncretic connections that will allow him to understand and accept the truth of a judgment. Only in adolescence does a child acquire freedom of thought and abandon attachment to objects; he begins to build his judgments based on hypotheses.