This study focuses on preferences for thinness or fatness in women cross-culturally. Results contradict previous studies and the hypothesis that preference for fatness in women is predicted by resource scarcity. Alternative explanations for valuation of fatness are explored, including climate and male dominance.

This article expands on Buss's (1989) study of the differences in male and female mate preferences in Western folktale characters by adding non-Western data. The new results show support for Buss's original findings.

This article examines differences in parental preference of potential in-laws across cultures. Results suggest that parents look for traits that will benefit themselves and their kin and that gender and subsistence type affects the traits that parents deem most important.

This article takes an evolutionary approach to understanding the patterns of characterization in folktales cross-culturally. Results indicate that literature shares several common themes cross-culturally, including mate selection and kin directed altruism.

This article examines the relationships between family structure, type of mate-selection system, and romantic love as a basis for mate-selection. Analysis indicates that autonomous mate selection is more common in societies with nuclear family structure and neolocal residence patterns. Romantic love as a basis for mate selection is also more common with nuclear family organization, but it is negatively associated with neolocal residence patterns.

This study focuses on cultural preferences for skin pigmentation. Findings indicate a general preference for lighter pigmentation in women. Cultural and biological theories are offered, and the authors suggest the skin-pigmentation preference is an instance of gene-culture coevolution. Areas for further research to explain the relationship of this finding with other features of society are suggested.

This study focuses on the relationship between pathogen prevalence and mate selection. Results show that increased pathogen prevalence is significantly associated with an increased importance in the physical attractiveness of potential mates.

The authors of this exploratory study tested predictions from five different theoretical models for the evolution of ethnoscientific expertise. They claim support for three of the models. They then compared cultural variables and their five models to three different knowledge domains: conceptual (unable to be easily observed), motor (easily observable), and medicinal. Their results indicate that their cultural transmission model is associated with the motor knowledge domain and that their proprietary knowledge model is associated with the medicinal knowledge domain.

This book examines population growth rate and its correlates by testing 274 hypotheses (derived from multiple theories) with an 18-society sample. Forty-one of these hypotheses were significant at the .05 level, leading the author to accept these relationships as reflective of the real world. The 274 hypotheses are grouped into 51 broader hypotheses, and marked by (*) where relationships are significant as designated by the author or by significance p < 0.05.

This study examines different sources of marital stability. Authors find that subsistence dependence between partners provides marital stability and where subsistence dependence is not important, romantic love substitutes as a source of marriage stability.