Researchers used various hypotheses to determine if cross-country differences in trust and cooperation would predict prosocial COVID-19 responses and policies. Using individual surveys from 34,526 participants from 41 countries, there were no significant associations between trust and cooperation and prosocial behavior, motivation, regulation, or stringency of policies. While the researchers did find significant variation among cross-country individuals, these results were unable to predict country-level prosocial responses.

In this study, the authors empirically assess the relationship between precolonial centralization and the implementation of modernization programs by African governments. Their findings indicate that current African countries tend to have better provisioning of public goods (including better access to education, healthcare, and infrastructure) when their ethnic groups' precolonial institutions were more centralized.

A study assessed whether individuals express discriminatory attitudes in family and political settings across groups defined by COVID-19 vaccination status across 21 countries. The study found that vaccinated people express discriminatory attitudes towards unvaccinated individuals at a level as high as discriminatory attitudes commonly aimed at immigrant and minority populations. However, there was an absence of evidence that unvaccinated individuals display discriminatory attitudes towards vaccinated people. Discriminatory attitudes towards the unvaccinated were found in all countries except for Hungary and Romania and were more strongly expressed in cultures with stronger cooperative norms. The study suggests that contributors to the public good of epidemic control, such as vaccinated individuals, react negatively towards perceived "free-riders," such as unvaccinated individuals. The study also suggests that discriminatory attitudes, including support for the removal of fundamental rights, emerged despite appeals to moral obligations to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake.

This study investigates previous findings that indicate precolonial centralization was beneficial for development in Africa. Using new survey data from public primary schools, the author shows that the failure of leaders of centralized regions to comply with federal regimes was punished with underinvestment in public infrastructure services, hindering development and limiting access to these services in recent populations. The author proposes that the extent to which precolonial centralization was beneficial for development in Africa is mediated by compliance of the local governing bodies with federal regimes.

This article aims to demonstrate the effects of national culture on countries’ COVID-19 morbidity and mortality rates when controlling for GDP and population age over 65. The author measured various cultural dimensions derived from GLOBE and tested it against the country’s COVID-19 morbidity and mortality rates. The author found a significant relationship between culture and COVID-19 outcomes suggesting that culture, beyond only GDP and age, may predict COVID-19 outcomes.

The author tests various hypotheses regarding cross-cultural occurrence of geophagy, the eating of earth. Nearly 500 years of references to geophagy were compiled into the Database on Human Geophagy, which was then used to examine biological justifications for this little-understood behavior.

What causes people to trust or distrust others? Through a multi-level empirical analysis, the authors of this article find that societies with historical exposure to infectious diseases will tend to minimize contact with contaminated out-groups while strengthening in-group relationships to manage infections, thus developing a lower radius of trust.

Lowes and Nunn test the theory that the transatlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades of the thirteenth to nineteenth centuries prompted a shift towards matrilineal kinship systems throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Controlling for ecological variables commonly thought to affect kinship structure (including ruggedness of terrain, suitability for agriculture, etc.), the authors find a significant correlation between the number of people enslaved from a given ethnic group, and the tendency of that group towards a matrilineal kinship system. Polygyny was also identified as a statistically significant characteristic of communities most impacted by the slave trade.

In the present study, Peregrine tests two perspectives regarding social resilience to climate-related disasters: 1) that societies with more inclusive and participatory political structures (corporate political strategies) are more resilient to climate-related disasters, and 2) that societies with tighter adherence to social norms are more resilient to climate-related disasters. Results support the notion that societies with greater political participation are more socially resilient to catastrophic climate-related disasters. Because these results are justifiably generalizable across multiple historical and cultural contexts, Peregrine's findings are a useful contribution to aid in disaster response policy decision making.

The goal of the paper is to demonstrate how international slave trade spread the institution of slavery throughout Africa, resulting in long-term effects of the continent’s income and political centralization. The author first estimated the travel time to slave ports from each society in the Ethnographic Atlas to determine predicting factors for the adoption of slave trade in African societies. The author reported that societies with high exposure to slave capture in the past were more likely to have the custom of slavery and the custom of polygyny. The author further suggested that slavery institutions emerged in West Africa through local, politically centralized aristocratic systems while emerging in East Africa through the preservation of wealth within the nuclear family over generations.