The article examines whether cultural groups tend to use supernatural beliefs more to explain natural phenomena or social phenomena. Analysis of ethnographic text from 114 diverse societies reveals that supernatural explanations are more common for natural phenomena, consistent with the theory that humans tend to perceive intent and agency in the natural world. However, supernatural explanations of social phenomena were more prevalent in urbanized societies with greater social complexity and anonymity. The study highlights how people use supernatural beliefs to explain their world and how this varies across small-scale and urbanized communities.

This article presents some specific criteria that can be used to assign a society a place on the tight-loose continuum. Political authority, management of property, religion, labor, and trade are among the cultural elements considered. The author explains that these criteria can be organized into a 12-point Guttman scalogram.

This study examines 12 matched pairs of closely related societies and suggests that there is a relationship between socialization pressure toward compliance (rather than assertion) and emphasis on food production. Results also indicate that stronger compliance training is associated with higher indulgence in infancy and lower frequency of drunkenness in adulthood.

Researchers examine ethnographic literature from Africa and Colombia and conduct interviews in 12 Colombian cities with the aim of exploring the connection between female genital modification (FGMo) in Colombia and Africa. They theorize that the trans-atlantic slave trade was the start of sociocultural transmission of FGMo pratices to Colombia, and that this will be evident based on the presence of FGMo practices and the composition and connectivity of populations.

Considerable variation has been observed in allomaternal nursing (breast-feeding by individuals other than mothers) behavior across contemporary foraging populations: while relatively common in some populations, it is rare or absent among others. Here the authors examine data on allomaternal nursing from 12 previous studies of foraging societies and utilize a worldwide sample of 104 cultures to assess global variation in allomaternal nursing.

The researchers, using principal component analysis, generalized additive models across 12 agriculture origin locations, and a model predicting hunter-gatherer population density, evaluate hindcasted population density trends to suggest predictors of the development of agriculture. Using domestication as an indicator of agriculture, they test 3 competing hypotheses regarding agriculture development. Their results are consistent with the "surplus" hypothesis, indicating that agriculture arose as population densities increased along with environmental capabilities.

This chapter comes from a book chiefly concerned with the issue of "ecological wisdom." The concept of ecological wisdom is defined as historical and contextual knowledge about both a local environment and the systems and relationships present in that environment. In this chapter, the author is specifically interested in ways that ecological wisdom is involved with water conservation strategies. To this end, the author collected 1012 records of water systems from eHRAF World Cultures which were qualitatively coded into 12 types of ecologically wise water conservation strategies. Two of these strategies are then explored in detail.

This article asks about the types of friendships people prefer across cultures, focusing on closeness and endurance. The authors hypothesize that people generally favor close and enduring friendships, especially when seeking support and social input, while those with self-serving or mate-seeking goals may prefer casual and convenient ones. Using data from 6,224 participants across 12 countries, they find that most people prefer close and enduring friendships, and that preferences largely align with actual friendships. Results also show small but significant effects of Dark Triad traits—particularly Machiavellianism—on friendship preferences. The conclusion is that friendship preferences are broadly consistent across cultures but shaped by individual goals and personality.

The sustainability of a society depends on the transmission of cultural knowledge between generations. This study examines how that transmission occurs in 23 egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies, where leaders tend to lack coercive power. Specifically, the study examines differences between the transmission of so-called “instrumental culture” (which includes skills such as how to do subsistence tasks) and what the authors call “opaque culture”, meaning abstract societal values and norms (e.g. rules of sharing and symbolic culture, such as religious beliefs). Using ethnographic data, the study finds that opaque culture is almost always conveyed through explicit teaching (rather than observation or imitation), often during middle childhood (ages 8 – 12). Among the 23 egalitarian societies in the sample in particular, adult community leaders, or other socially influential adult individuals, were most likely to be the ones engaging in teaching.

The implications of male sexual jealousy, a postulated universal, are explored. A cross-cultural review of homicides and adultery law is used to indicate male sexual jealousy as a leading cause. Statistical models are not presented; conclusions are deduced from a literature review.