This article aims to demonstrate the effects of national culture on countries’ COVID-19 morbidity and mortality rates when controlling for GDP and population age over 65. The author measured various cultural dimensions derived from GLOBE and tested it against the country’s COVID-19 morbidity and mortality rates. The author found a significant relationship between culture and COVID-19 outcomes suggesting that culture, beyond only GDP and age, may predict COVID-19 outcomes.

A study assessed whether individuals express discriminatory attitudes in family and political settings across groups defined by COVID-19 vaccination status across 21 countries. The study found that vaccinated people express discriminatory attitudes towards unvaccinated individuals at a level as high as discriminatory attitudes commonly aimed at immigrant and minority populations. However, there was an absence of evidence that unvaccinated individuals display discriminatory attitudes towards vaccinated people. Discriminatory attitudes towards the unvaccinated were found in all countries except for Hungary and Romania and were more strongly expressed in cultures with stronger cooperative norms. The study suggests that contributors to the public good of epidemic control, such as vaccinated individuals, react negatively towards perceived "free-riders," such as unvaccinated individuals. The study also suggests that discriminatory attitudes, including support for the removal of fundamental rights, emerged despite appeals to moral obligations to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake.

In this study, the authors empirically assess the relationship between precolonial centralization and the implementation of modernization programs by African governments. Their findings indicate that current African countries tend to have better provisioning of public goods (including better access to education, healthcare, and infrastructure) when their ethnic groups' precolonial institutions were more centralized.

Researchers tested the popular identity fusion theory, which states that while maintaining one’s own individual identity, a deep affinity with one’s group can contribute to sacrifice for that group, in conjunction with their own hypotheses, using a behavior economic experiment. The experiment looked at whether after rolling a die to determine which cup a coin was placed into, participants actually followed the rules, or favored themselves (by putting the coin into their own cups at a disproportionate rate). The findings state that while on average, the individual participants did indeed favor themselves, those with higher ingroup fusion were more likely to sacrifice coins to other members of their ‘ingroup.' The experiments were conducted in 8 culturally diverse field sites.

This study examines the interrelationships between achievement, aggression, psychological distress, competition and interpersonal behavior. Authors suggest that levels of achievement, aggression, and psychological distress are partly determined by corresponding levels of of competition and interpersonal intensity. Hypotheses are supported.

The authors of this study integrate recent data with data on ancestral ethnic groups' exposure to the slave trade in order to examine the relationship between this historical exposure and children vaccination status against measles. They find evidence to support their hypothesis that children from mothers whose ancestors belonged to an ethnic group that exported slaves are less likely to be vaccinated against measles, theorizing that this correlation stems from distrust in medical and governmental institutions. Supporting this theory, they also find that groups historically exposed to the slave trade that have higher preference for traditional practices are even less likely to vaccinate their children against measles.

This study investigates previous findings that indicate precolonial centralization was beneficial for development in Africa. Using new survey data from public primary schools, the author shows that the failure of leaders of centralized regions to comply with federal regimes was punished with underinvestment in public infrastructure services, hindering development and limiting access to these services in recent populations. The author proposes that the extent to which precolonial centralization was beneficial for development in Africa is mediated by compliance of the local governing bodies with federal regimes.

The author tests various hypotheses regarding cross-cultural occurrence of geophagy, the eating of earth. Nearly 500 years of references to geophagy were compiled into the Database on Human Geophagy, which was then used to examine biological justifications for this little-understood behavior.

This study explores the concept of "healthy" and "sick" societies. The author considers indicators of stress as correlates of sick and healthy societies and finds that the best indicator of the sickness or healthiness of a society is its suicide rate.

This article reviews sociological and psychological explanations of suicide, focusing on a thwarting disorientation theory. This theory posits that a person who commits suicide is likely to have lost social ties and perceived someone to blame for that loss. The author examines seven cultural traits (wife-beating, marriage restrictions, divorce freedom, witchcraft accusation, drunken brawling, defiant homicide, and frequent warfare) that can cause thwarting disorientation.