ABSTRACT

The relationship between beliefs and behavior has been an elusive one in both psychology and anthropology. As suggested elsewhere in this volume, a central question that has heretofore been neglected in the study of parental beliefs is what difference they make in parental behavior that is relevant to children’s developmental outcomes. In anthropology, the theoretical relationship between beliefs and behavior has also been problematic, as illustrated by recent critiques of classical anthropological studies of other cultures in which thinking and action were represented as harmoniously integrated (e.g., Mead, 1928; Freeman, 1983). Cognitive anthropological studies of cultural models have tended to avoid systematic behavioral observation because, as D’Andrade (1984) argued, “the external signs, the public events, are too elliptical to serve as a good place to begin the search for organization and structure” (p. 105). Nevertheless, there is increasing recognition of the intimate connections between beliefs and behavior in the formulation of cultural models as goals for action (D’Andrade & Strauss, in press).