Abstract

The Iournal of Social Psychology, 1963, 61, 185-199. Cornell Uniwersify, Bowling Green State Univcrsity, and University of Oxford JOHN M. ROBERTS, BRIAN SUTTON-SMITH, AND ADAM KENDON A. INTRODUCTION Earlier publications have shown that the three major divisions of games in culture (games of physical skill, games of strategy, and games of chance) have specific associations with child training practices and other cultural variables ( 11, 12). In these studies games were viewed as expressive models and both the players’ involvement in them and the cultural support of them ( 12). This was explained in terms of a conflict-enculturation hypothesis hypothesis holds that conflicts induced by child training processes and sub- sequent learning lead to involvement in games and other expressive models which in turn provide buffered learning or enculturation important both to the players and to their societies. Since all games model competitive situations it was suggested also that these three classes of games represent different com- petitive or success styles ( 12, 14). The present study continues this general in- quiry into models, but it is focused on the strategic mode of competition not is modeled in games of strategy but also as it occurs in folk tales