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.

This study investigates possible relationships between the need for achievement and power (as measured in folktales) with rates of suicide and homicide in preindustrial societies. Analysis suggests that homicide is not associated with either the need for achievement or power, but suicide is positively associated with the need for power.

The authors hypothesizes that fear of the dead will be correlated with an emphasis on achievement and affiliation in folk tales. Results do not support this hypothesis.

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.

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 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.

Using a psychoanalytic-materialist approach, the author examines the possible effects of environmental unpredictability on the prevalence of unprovoked aggression by characters in folktales.

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.

This study examines aggression in folktales in relation to child socialization variables. The author suggests that punishment for aggression and aggression anxiety are related to how aggression is portrayed in folktales. Hypotheses are supported.