The authors put forward a theoretical model called "personality integration of culture." At the heart of the model is the idea that psychological processes may help explain why certain aspects of culture are related to other aspects. To test this model they focus on theories and therapies regarding illness and they use psychoanalytic ideas on positive and negative fixation to suggest how differences in child-rearing customs may account for different ideas about the causes of illness. The strongest results relate to socialization anxiety in a particular area of socialization (e.g., oral, dependency, and aggression) amd respective causes of illness. Results regarding negative fixation are generally supported, whereas positive fixation is not.

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 discusses the association between early dependence indulgence and the style of patient-healer interaction. A relationship was found between early dependence and person-oriented healing, however the study is only preliminary and further testing is needed.

It is widely accepted that an individual’s cultural environment (the media they consume, the local political climate, etc.) shape their ideas about the compatibility between science and religion. This study explores that theory in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, examining survey data from 7,844 individuals in order to comment on the correlation between the number of religious precautions that each participant was undertaking during the pandemic (e.g. praying) and the number of public health precautions (e.g. masking). Twenty-seven countries are used as a proxy for 27 distinct cultures.

This chapter examines how sorcery, sin, and the superego function in societies to uphold taboos and other forms of social control. The author also explores the child-rearing conditions that are necessary to produce and maintain these cultural mechanisms. Several hypotheses are tested and all are supported.

The authors of this study integrate recent data with data on ancestral ethnic groups' exposure to the slave trade in order to examine the relationship between this historical exposure and children vaccination status against measles. They find evidence to support their hypothesis that children from mothers whose ancestors belonged to an ethnic group that exported slaves are less likely to be vaccinated against measles, theorizing that this correlation stems from distrust in medical and governmental institutions. Supporting this theory, they also find that groups historically exposed to the slave trade that have higher preference for traditional practices are even less likely to vaccinate their children against measles.

This book chapter builds on Horton's 1943 psychoanalytical study of drunkenness. The author tests an overall theory that drunkenness, which facilitates personal and uninhibited interactions, is more acceptable, and therefore prevalent, in societies with loose, rather than rigid, social relationships. Indicators of social rigidity, such as strict socialization or male dominance through patrilocality, are tested for relationships to drunkenness.

This study uses empirical analysis to parse out different dimensions of permissiveness in child-rearing. Oral-sexuality, independence-anality, and aggression are the dimensions identified.

This study examines whether theories of illness causation are regionally distributed, as was reported by Murdock (1980). Optimal scaling analysis suggests two regional patterns, one in African and Circum-Mediterranean societies, the other in Eurasian, Insular Pacific, North American, and South American societies.

The author analyzes 76 societies synchronically, positing that the evil eye belief functions as a useful heuristic and prosocial/cohesive element in weakly-institutionalized societies with significant wealth inequality; in particular, the evil eye belief is found to be more prevalent in agro-pastoral societies where material wealth is vulnerable and plays a dominant role in subsistence economy.