The author attempts to test the "Oedipus-complex" hypothesis--the psychoanalytic idea that under certain conditions (such as the long-post partum sex taboo) males are sexually attracted to their mothers and as a consequence certain fears and anxiety are generaated. The hypothesis is tested at the societal-level using ethnographic data.

This book chapter tests new and pre-existing theories (Horton, Field, Bacon et al.) for the cause of variation in drinking across cultures. Folktale content is used to test psychological variables more directly than has been done previously. Folktale content is analyzed programmatically with an acknowledged error level of up to one-third. Results lend support to Field's 1962 theory that loose social organization facilitates drinking.

This study investigates the strategic mode of competition in both games of strategy and folk talkes. Various significant relationships between games of strategy, folktales, social complexity, and child rearing variables are observed.

Causal factors to the development of crime are examined. Frequency of theft and personal crime are tested against these causal factors in a search for correlations.

This study tests the relationship between menstrual taboos and castration anxiety. The author posits that the extensiveness of menstrual taboos is determined by the average castration anxiety. Using various measures of castration anxiety, the author finds significant support for this hypothesis.

The authors compare language phylogenies and spatial distributions with folktale frequencies of Indo-European peoples in order to reconstruct their cultural transmission. A stronger association is found between folktale frequency and language phylogeny than has been proposed in earlier literature studies, indicating that vertical transmission is more influential on folktale distribution than horizontal transmission through spatial proximity. Finally, the frequencies of certain folktales appear to trace the ancestral divergences of Indo-European languages to a much deeper level than previously though, suggesting that folktales are representative of broader features of culture, rather than recent literary inventions.

Acerbi, Kendal, and Tehrani examine the relationship between population size and cultural complexity as measured by a non-technological cultural domain: folktales. Three measures of complexity for folktales are analyzed, 1) number of tale types, 2) number of narrative motifs, and 3) number of traits in variants of two international folktales. Findings suggest that the relationship between cultural complexity and population may depend on the domain, as different domains vary in cultural maintenance and transmission.

This paper suggests that Fischer's (1961) "male security" variable is not adequate. Cross-cultural analyses suggest that male security in the realm of father-son interaction may be more important than male security in the realm of heterosexual interaction in explaining the line shape preference of a society.

The authors of the present study investigate the psychological correlates of heavy drinking by using thematic content of folktales as a reflection of the cognitive processes of people in a given society. Subsequently, thematic variables are compared to ethnographic ratings in order to better understand how and if thought and reality correlate. Results are examined in the context of previous findings by other researchers, namely D. Horton (1943).

This article expands on Buss's (1989) study of the differences in male and female mate preferences in Western folktale characters by adding non-Western data. The new results show support for Buss's original findings.