This article investigates relationships among society size, war and conflict, preferred habitats, and belief in moralizing gods. The authors discuss morality and collective action in the face of natural disasters and competition for resources, theorizing that beliefs in moralizing gods could facilitate such cooperation.

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.

Does religion cause violent conflict? In order to examine this question, the researcher tests the correlation between occurrence of belief in a moralizing god and frequency of conflict events in sub-regional Africa, controlling for various geographic and biotic variables. A significant positive correlation prompts speculation about the theoretical mechanisms by which belief in a moralizing god, including unwillingness to compromise on sacred scripture and exclusionary group identity formation, could engender violent conflict.

This study proposes ways in which the environment may affect behavioral and psychocultural processes. Results provide moderate support for a relationship between climate and emotional expressiveness.

Using multilevel modeling and society-level regressions as well as mediational path modeling, the authors test two alternative models that consider how resource stress, religious beliefs, and beyond-household food and labor sharing may be related. The resource stress model suggests that high resource stress has two consequences: 1) that such stress may lead to beliefs that gods and spirits are associated with weather and 2) that resource stress leads to more sharing. Furthermore, this model suggests that the relationship between resource stress and sharing is not mediated by god beliefs. The alternative model considered, the moralizing high god model, suggests that resource stress will lead to more sharing but it is mediated by moralizing high gods. Before testing the path models, the authors first consider the relationships between resource stress and beliefs about high gods, superior gods, and minor spirits involvement with weather. Since the results were strongest for high gods, the path models focused on high gods. The results largely support the resource stress model rather than the high god moralizing model.

This study examines some of the environmental and psychological predictors of warfare frequency and interpersonal aggression. Results suggest that socialization for aggression in boys is the most significant predictor of warfare. However, authors suggest that socialization for aggression may be a consequence, rather than a cause, of war.

Derived from the fear of supernatural punishment hypothesis, this paper explores whether the prosocial attitude of a group or individuals will increase with the threat of punishment from a high god or visible supernatural agent, such as sorcerers and witches. The author found that fear of supernatural punishment did not affect prosocial behavior and suggested that religious beliefs may give rise to institutions with the task of enforcing social compliance rather than direct control.

This study examines husband-wife relationships, specifically rooming and sleeping arrangements, as they relate to variables such as infant care, subsistence, residence, and cultural complexity. Several hypotheses are tested and all are supported.

This article builds on previous cross-country and cross-state research into Tightness-Looseness (TL) theory, which proposes relationships between the incidence of ecological threat and cultural tightness, as well as tightness’ downstream effects on belief in a moralizing high god, inter-group contact and authoritarian leadership. To evaluate the generalizability of TL theory beyond complex cultures, the authors test these relationships among 86 nonindustrial societies from the ethnographic record. A structural equation model is presented of the results for nonindustrial societies; it is generally in accord with previous findings from more complex societies. Because the nonindustrial sample is more variable, they also look at relationships between societal complexity and kinship heterogeneity, aspects that vary in nonindustrial societies.

Using a cross-cultural sample of 91 societies, this paper draws on ecological theory to test if unpredictable environments will favor subsistence diversification. The general hypothesis is that societies with high climate unpredictability and resource stress would exhibit more subsistence diversity than societies in more stable climates. The authors examined four environmental and resource stress variables while controlling for temperature variance, subsistence activity, and phylogeny. Support was found for 2 of the 4 variables--chronic scarcity and environmental instability. In the discussion they suggest that more commonly observed events (e.g. annual hunger and climate unpredictability) may give people more motivation to change subsistence than rarer events (e.g. natural hazards and famine).