Publications

Cover of Invisible Companions by J. Bradley Wigger

Wigger, J. Bradley. Invisible Companions: Encounters with Imaginary Friends, Gods, Ancestors, and Angels. Stanford, 2019. A full-length book about our interviews with children with invisible friends. Available through Stanford University Press or Amazon.

You can read an excerpt: “Brief Interviews with Imaginary Friends (and the Kids Who Love Them),” Literary Hub, September 9, 2019. Excerpt

Wigger, J. Bradley, “The Religious Imagination of Children Project: An Initial Research Report,” International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 2019. Article

Burdett, E. R. R., Wigger, J. B., & Barrett, J. L. “The Minds of God, Mortals, and In-Betweens: Children’s Developing Understanding of Extraordinary and Ordinary Minds Across Four Countries,” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 2019. Article 

Wigger, J. Bradley. “Invisible Friends?” The Natural Parent Magazine, July 31, 2019. Article

Wigger, J. Bradley. “Invisible Friends in Friends across Four Countries: Kenya, Malawi, Nepal, and the Dominican Republic,” International Journal of Psychology, 2017. Compares the prevalence rates between the four countries. Significant differences were found between three of the four samples. Article

Wigger, J. Bradley. “Children’s Theory of God’s Mind,” Religious Education (Vol. 111, no. 3), 2016. Explores why theory-of-mind research matters to the field of religious education. A limited number of copies (eprints) are available here: Link

Wigger, J. Bradley; Paxson, Katrina, and Ryan, Lacey. “What Do Invisible Friends Know?: Imaginary Companions, God, and Theory of Mind.” International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, Vol. 23, Issue 1 (January, 2013). This article is much more technical, providing research methods, descriptions of the cognitive tests administered, and a statistical analysis of the results. article

Wigger, J. Bradley. “See-through knowing: Learning from Children and their invisible friends.” Journal of Childhood and Religion, Vol. 2, Issue 3 (May, 2011). This is an free, scholarly online journal: