Additional cross-cultural evidence on the selective usage of nonmaterial beliefs in explaining life events

Two studies, one conducted in the Netherlands (N = 87) and one in Italy wit h two samples-Catholic Youth (N = 41) and Young Communists (N = 41)-assesse d the cross-cultural generality of the previously confirmed hypothesis (Pep itone & Saffiotti, 1997) that six universal nonmaterial beliefs-fate, God, luck, chance, just punishment, and just reward-are used selectively to inte rpret life events. A 'selective correspondence' between the six beliefs and the standard life event cases specifically constructed to engage the belie f-specializations was predicted. All three samples showed the predicted cor respondence in terms of significant ordinal correlations in a 6 nonmaterial belief x 9 life events classification. In addition, the findings ave consi stent with the assumption that the degree of selective correspondence depen ds upon the importance of beliefs in the sample under study. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.