The Meaning of life: Animism in the Classificatory Skills of Older Adults

Abstract

Seventy-five participants aged from their teens to their seventies were measured on a battery of measures of personality, lifestyle, intelligence, and educational background. These measures were gauged against performance on a measure of animism, in which participants judged twenty-three items (4 alive, 19 non-living) as living or non-living. Although animism errors increased with age, all groups displayed animism errors, thereby contradicting Piaget (1965). Performance is partially explained by fluid intelligence level, but is more plausibly ascribed to progressive loss of what is essentially peripheral information to non-academic people.