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We propose for social scientists a theoretical toolbox containing a set of motivations that neurobiologists have recently validated. We show how these motivations can be used to create a theory of society recognizably similar to existing stable societies (sustainable, self‐reproducing, and largely peaceful). Using this toolbox, we describe society in terms of three institutions: economy (a source of sustainability), government (peace), and the family (reproducibility). Conducting a thought experiment in three parts, we begin with a simple theory with only two motivations. We then create successive theories that systematically add motivations, showing that each element in the toolbox makes its own contribution to explain the workings of a stable society and that the family has a critical role in this process.

We propose for social scientists a theoretical toolbox containing a set of motivations that neurobiologists have recently validated. We show how these motivations can be used to create a theory of society recognizably similar to existing stable societies (sustainable, self-reproducing, and largely peaceful). Using this toolbox, we describe society in terms of three institutions: economy (a source of sustainability), government (peace), and the family (reproducibility). Conducting a thought experiment in three parts, we begin with a simple theory with only two motivations. We then create successive theories that systematically add motivations, showing that each element in the toolbox makes its own contribution to explain the workings of a stable society and that the family has a critical role in this process.

Social scientists involved on cross-cultural research face a variety of challenges. This issue is discussed in the context of emic and etic approaches to research. A project illustrating some of these challenges is presented. A projective measure completed by each family as a group was used to capture the experience of family in Japanese and American families. Some culturebased hypotheses were confirmed, and an interesting serendipitous finding was explored in depth by a cross-cultural team. The unexpected finding was that pictures made by Japanese families, compared to those made by American families, were more likely to contain multiple images of the family. Further evaluation showed that the Japanese multiple images were most likely to reflect a textured, non-unitary experience, depicting a variety of contexts. The paper concludes by providing suggestions for enhancing the quality of cross-cultural research.