A Study of belief structure in Iranian folk tales

Belief structure is basis of thoughts and individual social actions in human beings. In this Elements such as courage, power, wealth, spirituality, and success each have a place in such a structure to mold and strengthen the type of personality of each individual. In addition to entertainment aspect of folk tales of each nation, they contain and promote such beliefs indirectly. Nowadays economical, psychological and social success and self-actualization, breakthrough and self-esteem are promoted through tales and stories. In this study based on Arene\Thompson classification, the beliefs were extracted from 153 Iranian folk tales and the final results has been evaluated based on psychological theories. The results show some Iranian folk tales have not paid much attention to personality development and in some other cases had been introducing incorrect patterns.