| Abstract: | Two studies, one conducted in the Netherlands (N=87) and one in Italy with two samples—Catholic Youth (N=41) and Young Communists (N=41)—assessed the cross‐cultural generality of the previously confirmed hypothesis (Pepitone & Saffiotti, 1997) that six universal nonmaterial beliefs—fate, God, luck, chance, just punishment, and just reward—are used selectively to interpret life events. A ‘selective correspondence’ between the six beliefs and the standard life event cases specifically constructed to engage the belief‐specializations was predicted. All three samples showed the predicted correspondence in terms of significant ordinal correlations in a 6 nonmaterial belief ×9 life events classification. In addition, the findings are consistent with the assumption that the degree of selective correspondence depends upon the importance of beliefs in the sample under study. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
