This article proposes that societal factors that cause anxiety concerning isolation and self-reliance leads to a preoccupation with dreams. Authors test associations between subsistence economy and marital residence and the use of dreams to seek and control supernatural powers.

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.

The authors test the male Oedipus complex hypothesis with a prediction suggesting that the scale of kin-avoidance is related to "a phobic attitude towards incest" (129).