In this article, the author seeks to understand the effect of witchcraft beliefs (both personal and regional) on various measures of social capital. Through empirical tests, the author concludes that witchcraft beliefs are robustly associated with anti-social attitudes in 19 Sub-Saharan African countries. Specifically, they find that witchcraft and other supernatural beliefs significantly affect levels of both generalized trust and trust for people of other religions. They also find that these attitudes are present among second-generation immigrants to Europe who originate from these countries. The worldwide Standard Cross-Cultural Sample is also used to examine relationships between witchcraft, mistrust, and other anti-social behaviors.

This dissertation takes a sociobiological approach to examining altruistic behavior in humans. Hypotheses regarding the relationship between individuals and altruistic behaviors are tested and supported by cross-cultural analysis.

In order to explore the evolution of mutually beneficial transactions in large societies, this experimental study gathered data on the way people in societies of different subsistence types played games simulating interactions with anonymous others. The degree of fairness displayed by different players was correlated with measures of large-scale institutions, such as a market or world religion, that were present in a player’s society. Results suggest that “modern prosociality is not solely the product of an innate psychology, but also reflects norms and institutions that have emerged over the course of human history” (1480).

This article offers a behavioral ecological approach to the study of child training practicies. Gender differences in child training are discussed in light of evolutionary theory, and the author suggests training is likely tailored to promote the reproductive success of each gender. Generally, boys are trained to be more aggressive, stronger, and self-reliant; girls are trained to be more hard-working, responsible, obedient, and sexually restrained. Gender differences in child training frequently vary with degree of polygyny and/or social stratification in a society.

Researchers used various hypotheses to determine if cross-country differences in trust and cooperation would predict prosocial COVID-19 responses and policies. Using individual surveys from 34,526 participants from 41 countries, there were no significant associations between trust and cooperation and prosocial behavior, motivation, regulation, or stringency of policies. While the researchers did find significant variation among cross-country individuals, these results were unable to predict country-level prosocial responses.

This book discusses the characteristics of adolescence cross-culturally and examines the differences in the adolescent experience for males and females. Several relationships are tested in order to gain an understanding of cross-cultural patterns in adolescence.

Considerable disagreement exists in regard to the origin and distribution of economic phenomena such as money, slavery, markets, exchange, and imbalanced transfers. Here the author utilizes a worldwide cross-cultural sample of 60 pre-industrial "societies" to empirically test many economic hypotheses, with a focus on distributional mechanisms and institutions.

This article investigates child socialization toward obedience and conformity as a function of the supervision that parents experience in their own lives. Measures of economic, familial, political, and religious supervision in parents' lives are examined.

This study presents a theory of land inheritance that "focuses on the incentives that land inheritence rules create for potential heirs" and tests this theory on a cross-cultural sample.

This article investigates how pathogen risk affects xenophobia, in-group bias, and collectivist and conformist values. Data analysis suggests that there is an association between pathogen risk and socialization for collectivist values, but the other variables were not associated with pathogen prevalence.