Abstract

Abstract Child-rearing pressures toward obedience were related to measures of art and music characteristics in a sample comprising 77 societies of the world. An initial attempt to demonstrate a connection between these pressures to obey (on children five to 12 years of age) and complexity of art products was partially successful: 56 out of 92 measures of such pressure were found to be positively related to “complexity of design” (χ2 = 4.35, p < .05, two-tailed test). Other measures of art and music characteristics were found to be related to pressure to obey at more than chance levels. However, since it was not possible to reach a consensus on what art and music complexity is, the results demonstrate only the influence of child-rearing pressures, and not whether such pressures produce complexity of art products.