This chapter examines the variables that are associated with the evil eye belief cross-culturally. Results suggest that the evil eye belief is significantly associated with various socioeconomic and demographic variables. All hypotheses are supported.

This book examines naming practices cross-culturally. The author posits that naming practices help to both reflect and create conceptions of personal identity. Several correlations between name meanings and practices and various sociocultural variables are presented.

This article uses factor analysis to identify the key variables underlying the many cross-cultural associations reported by Textor (1967). Twelve factors are identified.

This article tests hypotheses about the relationship between how the general anticipations of pain in develop in children and the formal belief systems of a society. The authors posit that beliefs in malevolent supernatural beings reflect punitive child rearing practices and beliefs in benevolent supernatural being relfect nurturing child rearing practices. Results generally support this hypothesis.

This study investigates correlates of the post-partum sex taboo. Empirical analysis identifies several predictors, from extensive agriculture to localized kin groups. The authors suggest that the taboo imposes a burden on women and unmarried or monogamous young men, and it is best maintained in a community in which elders are in firm control and married women are considered outsiders due to village exogamy.

This article examines the relationship between child training and supernatural beliefs. The authors develop a schema delineating the role of the supernatural in nurturance and punishment; ten hypotheses associating the role of the supernatural with various child training practices are tested. Several are confirmed.

This article reviews the theory that permanent animal groups have only one sex breed outside the group in order to balance genetic diversity and group relatedness. The author theorises that since males inherit valuable membership in patrilocal/lineal societies, they are expected to be more concerned about the probability of paternity than males in matrilocal/lineal societies. Moral rules, and specifically belief in moralizing gods, are expected to reflect this difference. In other words, moralizing gods are used to restrict the sexual activity of women.

This book examines population growth rate and its correlates by testing 274 hypotheses (derived from multiple theories) with an 18-society sample. Forty-one of these hypotheses were significant at the .05 level, leading the author to accept these relationships as reflective of the real world. The 274 hypotheses are grouped into 51 broader hypotheses, and marked by (*) where relationships are significant as designated by the author or by significance p < 0.05.

This article is a quantitative analysis of 592 participants from 8 societies. The study examines a number of theories about what predicts moralistic religions, including life history theory. Findings suggest that there is no evident relationship between these life history predictions and the religious beliefs regarding moralism.

The purpose of this book is to introduce a conceptual and methodological perspective called the "universalist approach," and to use this approach in exploring the pancultural antecedents and affects of parental acceptance-rejection of children,