The “culture of honor” hypothesis holds that subsistence strategies relying more heavily on pastoralism tend to encourage the development of moral frameworks centered on honor and revenge. This study uses ethnographic data from the Ethnographic Atlas and other sources to investigate morality among the descendants of pastoralists, who may have been raised in similar cultural settings but have not necessarily experienced the material realities of pastoralism firsthand. It finds that descendants of pastoralists continue to exhibit a high emphasis on retaliation and revenge in civil and non-civil conflicts, and in their historical folklore.

Using a sample of 145 African societies, the authors seek to examine the relationship between segmentary lineage organization and conflict. Presented is evidence supporting the claim that segmentary lineage societies are more prone to conflict and to conflicts larger in scale and duration. The authors aim to contribute to a better understanding of the determinants of conflict, and additionally address the applicability of the present study beyond Africa.

In this article, the author seeks to understand the effect of witchcraft beliefs (both personal and regional) on various measures of social capital. Through empirical tests, the author concludes that witchcraft beliefs are robustly associated with anti-social attitudes in 19 Sub-Saharan African countries. Specifically, they find that witchcraft and other supernatural beliefs significantly affect levels of both generalized trust and trust for people of other religions. They also find that these attitudes are present among second-generation immigrants to Europe who originate from these countries. The worldwide Standard Cross-Cultural Sample is also used to examine relationships between witchcraft, mistrust, and other anti-social behaviors.