Authors suggest that in a majority of studied societies, kin of the deceased tend to engage ritually in risky prolonged and intimate preparation behaviors with corpses. This occurs namely in visual exposure and tactile interaction. Authors hypothesize that this extended contact not only allows true confirmation of death (through exposure to many cues), but also facilitates acceleration of a grieving process that returns the bereaved to a normal state of social functioning.

Using 57 cultures from the Human Relations Area Files database, this paper examines the function and effectiveness of the belief of punitive ancestors in small-scale societies. The authors found that belief in dangerous ancestral entities is widespread and common and that harm is preventable through ritualized mortuary practices. The authors concluded that the fear of ancestral spirits did not promote social cooperation or inhibit self-interest behavior, contrary to the supernatural punishment hypothesis.

In order to evaluate an adaptive justification for restriction of ritualized physical contact, the authors test association between three manifestations of physical interaction and prevalence of pathogens cross-culturally. Their expectation, supported by two of the three tested hypotheses, is that higher pathogen prevalence will lead to customs of restricted physical contact. Both cultural and biological evolution are suggested to be influential in selecting for physically intimate behaviors.

This article examines meat avoidance during pregnancy as an evolutionary adaptation. Data suggests that during pregnancy, meat avoidance is significantly more common cross-culturally than other types of food avoidance. The timing of meat avoidance, the presence of meat-borne pathogens, and sensory and ingestive changes in early pregnancy are also discussed.

This study retests the data presented by Sillitoe (1977) in his study of the relationship between likelihood of warfare and population density in New Guinea. Contrary to Sillitoe, the author finds a strong and significant association between the two variables. The author also finds a significant relationship between the severity of food shortages and the frequency of warfare cross-culturally.

Why do researchers see cross-cultural variations in the use of mental states during moral judgements? These researchers examined the relationship between this use and kinship intensity which has previously only been used for WEIRD (Western, Educated, Rich, & Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Although their data set was fairly small, their findings outline promising avenues of future investigations and hint toward a significant negative relationship. This article also identifies additional independent variables to be investigated more in depth in the future.

The authors of this study explore the relationship between climate variability and beliefs that high gods are associated with the weather. As predicted, they find significant correlations between these beliefs and dry climates. They then evaluate how these findings contribute to their previous understanding of resource stress and its association to beliefs in high gods.

This study reviews the dietary habits of South and East Asia, Oceania, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. Ethnographic descriptions and raw data are presented. The author concludes with several observed patterns: humans are carnivorous and become vegetarian by force of circumstance; taboos are more commonly used on meat than on plants; eating patterns conform to economic base; people tend to extract a fairly high percentage of available resources from their environment.

This study seeks to investigate the association between gender role attitudes and cultural values of embeddedness, hierarchy, and egalitarianism. After establishing approximate measurement equivalence, the authors ran correlations on data from 36 countries included in the latest edition of the International Social Survey Programme carried out in 2012. Results suggest that embeddedness and hierarchy are positively related to traditional gender role attitudes and egalitarianism is negatively related to traditional gender role attitudes.

Geophagy during pregnancy has been proposed to fulfill a number of adaptive functions, including relieving gastrointestinal distress, detoxification of the secondary compounds found in plant foods, and providing a supplementary source of minerals such as calcium. Using a sample of 60 African populations, the authors investigate geophagy during pregnancy in a cross-cultural perspective, emphasizing variation between dairying and non-dairying populations.