Carneiro presents work on the evolutionary sequences of cultures. He concludes that human societies have evolved in a direction towards increased complexity. He also discovers a specific sequence of cultural traits that societies have largely followed.

This study seeks to better understand different forms of leadership across non-WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) societies, and tests evolutionary theories regarding the qualities of leaders, their functions, and the costs and benefits they incur and provide as a part of their leadership. The authors assess the various aspects of leaders and leadership by coding 109 dimensions of leadership as represented in eHRAF World Cultures, using the Probability Sample Files, comprised on 60 cultures. By assessing the prevalence of each of these dimensions in the various cultures under consideration, the authors were able to ascertain some largely universal characteristics of leaders: that they 1) were judged intelligent and knowledgeable; 2) resolved conflicts; and 3) received material and social benefits. They also found that other dimensions varied by considerably group context (e.g., kin group leaders tended to be older), subsistence strategy (e.g., hunter-gatherer leaders tend to lack coercive authority), and gender (e.g., female leaders are more associated with family contexts). Further analyses showed that followers and leaders both benefited from leadership, and that shamans constitute a new brand of leader that both utilizes prestige and dominance in order to effectively rule.

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.

Using principal-components analysis, the author develops an Index of Sociocultural Development that measures the same concepts as Carneiro’s Index of Cultural Accumulation. Carneiro’s index also contains a measure of cultural elaboration which the author suggests examining further.

Researchers tested four models of leadership for qualities and correlates that could predict the transmission of leadership cross-culturally. Researchers sampled 60 societies from the Probability Sample Files, coding for 24 variables. Support was found for the prevalence of the collective action model and the prestige model, with a lack of support found for the dominance leadership model.

This article uses factor analysis to identify the key variables underlying the many cross-cultural associations reported by Textor (1967). Twelve factors are identified.

This article discusses the reasons behind advances in craft specialization particularly why there is a relationship between advances in craft specialization and the emergence of powerful elites. Hypothesis tests focused on political centralization.

The present study investigates whether there is resilience variability following climate-related disasters in societies that are corporate-oriented, which promote participatory and inclusive structures, and exclusionary-oriented, which limit political authority and power. The findings offer modest support for social resilience theory that more flexible (i.e. more participatory) societies would be more resilient after a disaster than less flexible societies. Although only 5 of 14 correlations are significant, the direction is significant by a binomial sign test.

Using a new expert survey, the authors explore the democraticness of traditional political systems (TPS) in 159 ethnic groups in Africa. Their initial analysis finds that measures of public preference input and political process control are particularly strong contributors to the degree that a society may develop democracy in their TPS. They also find that societies with powerful elders are more likely to be democratic, while more hierarchically organized political systems and those with kings, chiefs, and segmentary lineages are less likely.

The study looks at 137 countries and examines the relationship between disbelief in God and increased security in health, economic development and security. The findings provide additional support for the uncertainty hypothesis as there is a positive relationship between a country's health or financial growth/security and the population's disbelief in God.