Attitude toward Christianity and the Transition to Formal Operational Thinking

Abstract

Using a sample of 6,098 pupils in Scotland aged between 11 and 15 years, this paper tests the hypothesis that attitude toward Christianity will be significantly affected by the transition from concrete operational to formal operational thinking. Since churchgoing and gender are known to influence attitude toward Christianity and since ability has been shown to influence the emergence of formal operational thinking, male and female churchgoing and non‐churchgoing pupils drawn from selective and non‐selective schools are tested separately. The data give no evidence to support the hypothesis that the transition to formal operational thinking affects attitude toward Christianity in any way.