This study analyzes the relationship between communal democracy and family size. Results show a weakly significant negative correlation between communal leadership and family size. Authors suggest that this relationship could be challenged based on the known curvilinear relationship between family size and cultural complexity. However, several further tests suggest that there are grounds for maintaining that family size has some independent influence on the existence of communial democracy.

The study examines the relationship between communal democracy and family size. The results indicate a weak significant negative correlation between communal leadership and family size. Even though the researchers suggest that the known curvilinear relationship between the variables could challenge this finding, further tests indicate that there are grounds for maintaining that family size has some independent influence on the existence of communal democracy.

Controlling for community type, the researchers examine a potential relationship between family size (nuclear vs. extended) and communal leadership (hereditary vs. elected) in an effort to suggest potential predictors of hierarchical structures in societies. They claim support for their hypothesis that societies with nuclear families will be more likely to have democratic communal leadership, across four different community types.

This study investigates the relationship between domestic organization (i.e. family structure and size) and democracy at both the communal and supracommunal levels. The authors suggest that the prevalence of independent monogamous families in Europe in the Late Middle Ages may have facilitated the political evolution toward democracy.

This study explores predictors of variation in two dimensions of marital residence patterns among hunter-gatherers: 1) the tendency toward patrilocality versus matrilocality and 2) the tendency toward unilocality versus bilocality.

The present research investigates food sharing and labor sharing practices of 98 nonindustrial societies. The aims are to: 1) document the frequency and scope of sharing, and 2) test the theory that greater sharing is adaptive in societies subject to more resource stress (including natural hazards).

This article uses the Standard Cross-Cultural Samples to test the relationship between disease and economic growth among sub-Saharan African societies. The authors suggest that a higher disease prevalence limits social integration and economic development since pre-colonial times. The variable measuring economic growth is the complexity of large or impressive structures. The hypotheses are that 1) pathogen stress is negatively correlated to the presence of complex buildings, and 2) pathogen stress is positively correlated to increased ethnic diversity. The results support both hypotheses, and there are additional results, like 1) the negative correlation between pathogen stress and current income per capita and 2) the negative correlation between the increased ethnic diversity and current income per capita. Overall, this article shows the robust relationship between disease and economic development.

This study relates the type of games present in a society to the level of cultural complexity. Authors use a "game-type combination scale" that categorizes societies as having: 1) games of physical skill only; 2) games of physical skill and games of chance; and 3) games of physical skill, games of chance, and games of strategy. Results show a relationship between the game-type combination scale and indicators of cultural complexity.

This article considers the consequences of modernization. Factor analysis is used to identify four stages of modernization: 1) changes in education, government, and trade; 2) changes in health, technology, and transportation; 3) changes in family, religion, and toilet; and 4) changes in behavior. The authors then consider five trends they expect to be associated with modernization and test whether they develop over the course of the four stages. Results indicate that these 5 trends—increased cultural complexity, female status, pacification, suicide, and social stress—are associated with only the first and fourth stages.

This article investigates a cultural patterning of altered states of consciousness. The authors use an ordinal variable for a society's trance type; its four levels are 1) trance, 2) trance and possession trance, 3) possession trance, and 4) neither type. Results suggest that trance type is associated with measures of societal complexity and subsistence economy. Regional differences and the effects of diffusion are also examined.