In this study, the authors inspect the relationship between religion, morality, and cooperation by examining the extent to which people associate their deities with moral concern. Using data from 2,228 individuals in 15 different field sites, they find that on average, people tend to ascribe at least some moral concern to their deities, and this effect is stable even after controlling for the influence of explicitly moralistic deities that these societies also worship. The authors also find that ratings of moral concern are not necessarily very high, even for deities that are typically considered to be moralistic, and that there is individual-level variation in the degree of moral concern attributed to deities. In addition, there is an individual-level correlation between how morally interested two selected deities are conceived to be and that being male or more educated decreases the likelihood of associating deities with moral concern. These findings challenge the longstanding belief that belief in moralistic deities is unique to certain societies or religions and instead suggest that the association between deities and moral concern is more widespread and variable, and suggest that the moral character of gods may be tied to cooperation within societies.

In this article, the authors seek to determine cross-culturally valid predictors of dominant types of human subsistence around the world. They did this by formulating multiple models that incorporate different combinations of environmental, geographic, and social factors. These models were then used to test various hypotheses posed throughout the anthropological literature surrounding factors that determine dominant subsistence strategies.

Inter-group variation is greater in humans than in any other animal, and scholars continue to debate the cause of this diversity. Two competing explanatory models of human variation emphasize either (1) ecological differences and "evoked" culture or (2) population-level effects of cultural transmission. The former emphasizes mechanisms that operate within a single generation, while the latter emphasizes cumulative cultural history operating over many generations. To test these competing models, the authors measured the relative power of ecological variables as compared to culture history to predict behavioral variation in 172 western North American tribes. Culture history is subdivided into culture phylogeny (based on language phylogeny) and spatial distance.

In this article, the authors seek to investigate why some societies reject agriculture despite its many benefits. By modeling data regarding ecological fitness and cultural transmission, the authors found predictors for the degree to which a society relies on agriculture. The authors conclude that the degree of fitness a local environment had for early domesticates as well as the degree of contact with neighboring societies strongly predicts levels of dependence on agriculture.

In order to investigate cross-cultural variation in systems of conversational turn-taking (who speaks and when), the researchers analyze the association of various contextual, verbal, and non-verbal factors with mean response time. Despite some variation in response time between languages, each of the explanatory variables is found to have significant impact on response time independent of language. A further test on subjective perception of ideal response time suggests that although similar factors act on response patterns cross-culturally (in support of a 'universal systems' theory), speakers are hypersensitive to even minor cultural variations in response time.

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.

In this two-part study, researchers first collect data from 600 people from 8 different societies in an effort to examine the character of morality cross-culturally. In the second part, participants play a game to detect honesty and responses are related to conception of morality and religious beliefs. Researchers posit that there is a cooperative nature to conception of morality and that moral culture is related to impact upon one's social life, but that this conceptualization of morality only weakly predicts cooperative behavio. The religious beliefs are stronger predictors.

Using frequentist and Bayesian multi-level models in a sample of two international samples, the authors test whether there are significant sex differences in moral judgments across a large-scale examination of countries. They compare men and women using the five components of the Moral Foundations Theory: 1) care, (2) fairness, (3) loyalty, (4) authority, and (5) purity. In addition, they study the differences when considering socioeconomic and gender-equality status. The results partially support the presence of significant sex differences. While care, fairness, and purity were consistently higher for women; loyalty and authority were highly variable. The study also shows that there are larger sex differences in moral judgments across more individualist, WEIRD, and gender-equal societies.

This article examines the variation in color naming and susceptibility to visual illusions cross-culturally. Results suggest a geographic patterning of color naming and illusion susceptibility which parallels the distribution of eye pigmentation.

Researchers coded 473 texts from 53 cultures on suicidal behavior in the Probability Sample Files looking for evidence to support a new theoretical framework called the Costly Apology Model (signaling "I am genuinely remorseful for my actions, and you can trust that I will not do it again," (7)) to explain suicidal behavior that occurs after someone violates one or more social norms. This is theorized to be distinct behavior from the Bargaining Model (signaling "My fitness is genuinely being threatened, and I need your support." (7)) which could explain suicidal behavior after someone suffers harm from another, and from the Inclusive Fitness Model, where suicide occurs as a fitness behavior when an individual cannot reproduce or has a high cost to the fitness of their kin. .