Using a sample of eight non-Western communities from around the world, this article examines correlations between religious beliefs about the desires of local deities, and strategies employed to facilitate local intra-community cooperation. The authors find that the desires and concerns of local gods tend to encourage what have historically been the most effective modes of intra-group cooperation, while also reinforcing the local cultural milieu.

Using a psychoanalytic-materialist approach, the author examines the possible effects of environmental unpredictability on the prevalence of unprovoked aggression by characters in folktales.

The author presents an approach to understanding initiation ceremonies that differs from the approach of Whiting (1962). Cohen looks at the association between legal and kinship systems and childrens' experiences growing up. Several significant association are found between these variables.

This study investigates political organization and the punishment of nonmarital sex. The author suggests that "the rules governing each type of nonmarital relationship are outgrowths of different relationships between controlling political bodies and local boundary systems."

This article examines the relationship between early food gratification, emotional predispositions to share food with others, and community systems. Results suggest that gratification of food needs varies with community type, and young children who receive food whenever they cry or ask are more likely to share food in adulthood. In broader terms, the need to receive from others is gratified differently under different sociological conditions, and these differences influence individuals toward divergent socially patterned behaviors in adulthood.

The author postulates that there are different types of friendship that characterize different societies--"inalienable friendship," "close friendship," "casual friendship," and "expedient friendship." These types are postulated to be characteristic of different types of community systems (described on pages 314-318 of this volume).

The theoretical concern of this work is with different types of liability that societies emphasize in their legal systems and how that plays out in understanding the transition from childhood to adolescence as well as variation in incest taboos.

This study tests the relationship between group morality and hostility towards outgroups. Cross-cultural findings support the hypothesis that ingroup loyalty is associated with a greater emphasis on outgroup violence. Results from a second psychological study are included and also support the hypothesis.

Does belief in moralizing and punitive gods promote sociality between coreligionists who are otherwise strangers? A recent dataset of behavioral economic experiment results and demographic and religious data among eight disparate populations allows the researchers to test their hypothesis of a positive association between deity's perceived interest in human morality and favorability of treatment of outsiders who share a religion. Their findings mostly support this hypothesis, which they suggest lends credibility to a theory in which religion encourages cooperation between large groups of people, and is thus a successful product of cultural evolution.

This article is a quantitative analysis of 592 participants from 8 societies. The study examines a number of theories about what predicts moralistic religions, including life history theory. Findings suggest that there is no evident relationship between these life history predictions and the religious beliefs regarding moralism.