Abstract
The religious systems of the “simpler” societies around the world provide us with an opportunity to study their rather deeply engrained habits of thought having to do with the gods and spirits and their relationship to the self, to neighbors, and to family members. These habits of thought have probabilistic relations to the behavior directed toward the self, others, and the authorities representing the supernaturals. We believe that a cross-cultural analysis of the views that people have of the gods and spirits, therefore, can provide us with some insights about beliefs which may justify aggressive or helpful actions and may even reflect the habits of aggressive action insofar as culture helps to determine and maintain such habits.
A much shorter version of this paper was prepared for presentation at the Instanbul meetings of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, July 1986
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Lambert, W.W. (1992). Cultural Background to Aggression: Correlates and Consequences of Benevolent and Malevolent Gods and Spirits. In: Fra̧czek, A., Zumkley, H. (eds) Socialization and Aggression. Recent Research in Psychology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-84653-3_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-84653-3_14
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