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.

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.

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.

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.

This paper examines the relationship between moralizing gods (gods that impose moral rules or punish those who break them) and social complexity. The authors argue that previous research, which relied on the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample's "moralizing high gods" variable as a proxy measure for the presence of moralizing gods, may have underestimated the presence of moralizing gods in societies. This is because the criteria used to define "moralizing high gods" are not relevant to whether a god is moralistic or punitive. The authors argue that this leads to a false positive association between moralizing gods and social complexity, and that ethnographic evidence suggests that moralizing gods are actually more prevalent in small-scale societies than had previously been thought. Future researchers, therefore, need to be careful about making assumptions about the moralizing gods of small scale societies based on "moralizing high gods", and find other ways to identify whether moralizing gods are present.

This study investigates the relationship between the strength of historic kin-based interaction networks in a region, and the strength of modern state capacity in that region. The author compares two metrics, across a global sample: firstly, the Kinship Intensity Index (KII), which is calculated by region using five variables from the Ethnographic Atlas (societies are combined by region by weighting each EA society using its population size); and secondly, the State Capacity Index (SCI), which measures the functionality of modern-day nation-states. It is found that around the world, countries whose borders have historically been home to societies with strong kin-based interaction networks tend to have a significantly weaker state capacity.

The authors design and implement two tasks requiring linguistic and non-linguistic spatial reference across a linguistically-diverse sample in order to examine the relationship between language and cognition cross-culturally. The results, which indicate large conceptual variation in frame of spatial reference across as well as strong correlation between use of absolute descriptors and absolute cognitive representations within language communities, suggest that language structure may actively shape the systems of spatial representation available to different cultural groups.

Using a sample of 313 societies classified within 24 language phyla, authors put forward a statistical model based on climate data [specifically focused on the 10°C (50°F) winter temperature isotherm] to explain why dispersion of preindustrial language phyla is remarkably homogeneous even despite heterogeneous geographical dispersion of sampled preindustrial cultural groups. They suggest that temperature has been a barrier to migration.

Using a sample of 313 societies classified within 24 language phyla, authors put forward a statistical model based on climate data [specifically focused on the 10°C (50°F) winter temperature isotherm] to explain why dispersion of preindustrial language phyla is remarkably homogeneous even despite heterogeneous geographical dispersion of sampled preindustrial cultural groups. They suggest that temperature has been a barrier to migration.

Using a sample of 313 societies classified within 24 language phyla, authors put forward a statistical model based on climate data [specifically focused on the 10°C (50°F) winter temperature isotherm] to explain why dispersion of preindustrial language phyla is remarkably homogeneous even despite heterogeneous geographical dispersion of sampled preindustrial cultural groups. They suggest that temperature has been a barrier to migration.