Any attempt to list the beliefs and preferences of a large group of people can be at best a generalization. Within any group opinions and tastes will vary. Yet even among a group dedicated to non-conformity, many tendencies exist:
- The twin ideals of peace and love were and are paramount.
- Performing music casually, often with guitars, in private homes and outdoors in parks and music festivals
- Preference for psychedelic rock such as The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, early Pink Floyd, and Jefferson Airplane; blues such as Janis Joplin, traditional Eastern music, particularly from India, (Ravi Shankar), rock music with eastern influences (The Beatles), soulful funk like Sly & The Family Stone, jam bands like the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers Band, and folk music like Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell and more recently reggae. Neo-Hippies often participate in the bluegrass and/or folk music scene.
- Interracial dating and marriage, rejection of anti-miscegenation laws (e.g. apartheid South Africa).
- Free love, including open relationships and most consensual forms of sexual expression, except sex with children. Traditional legal constructs and religious teachings that prohibited non-procreative sex outside the bounds of marriage were widely flouted--premarital sex, extramarital sex, bisexuality and tolerance towards homosexuals. (See also: Sexual revolution).
- Communal living.
- Recreational drug use (as opposed to drug dependence), usually limited to psychedelic drugs such as cannabis, mescaline, salvia, psilocybin and LSD. Tendency to reject the Establishment's psychoactive drugs, which were and are legal, including alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, and psychiatric drugs.
- A fondness for nudity-especially being nude (naturism), as opposed to objectifying nude performers and images.
- Use of incense.
- Belief in Eastern spiritual concepts, such as karma and reincarnation; interest in Hindu and Buddhist religious philosophies is common.
- Belief that spiritual advancement leads to increased psychic ability, e.g., the ability to see the human aura. A vegetarian lifestyle was often considered important in this regard because it was thought to cleanse the body of impurities and "negative vibrations".
- Belief that a corrupt Establishment was abusing Mother Earth led hippies to participate in recycling and support environmentalism.
- Belief in astrology, tarot and I Ching divination.
- A mellow outlook on life, and a belief that the temporal world is a manifestation of human thought and consciousness.
- Elements of Romanticism and Transcendentalist philosophy are evident in hippie music, prose and other artistic expressions.
- Rejection of the typical American diet and, instead, exploration of vegetarianism, fasting, natural food (including whole foods and organic food), more foods from the Third World, and many other alternatives.
- Less competitive forms of exercise, such as foot bag (Hacky Sack), frisbees, handstands, dancing, snake-dancing (martial art), surfing, devil sticks (though referred to as "spin sticks" so as to not make a reference to the devil), and cycling.
- Alternative ways of making a living, especially not supporting the military-industrial complex, capitalism, wage-slavery, "keeping up with the Joneses", etc. For most hippies, reduced incomes or poverty.
- Female equality. The second wave of feminism was simultaneous with the hippie movement. However, the relationship between hippies (especially hippie males) and feminism was complex and often confrontational.
- Raising children more lovingly and peacefully, often with less coercive schooling and with more freedom.
- Natural birth, breastfeeding, no circumcision.
- Alternative media, including underground newspapers, the hipper rock 'n' roll radio stations, campus and community radio, movies promoting hip subjects and attitudes (art films, non-U.S. films, etc.). Tendency to reject television and to entertain themselves.