This study explores the relationship between level of legal evolution (measured on a Guttman scale that ranges from just mediation to counsel, police, and mediation) and level of societal complexity. Results suggest a significant association between level of legal evolution and level of societal complexity.

This study examines why conflict emerges and how societies resolve it. The authors posit that increasing societal scale and differentiation create more potential for conflict but also more complex forms of conflict resolution. Analysis supports this theory, showing that measures of cultural complexity are positively associated with legal mechanisms for conflict resolution.

This paper seeks to understand how the conflict resolution strategies of indigenous and non-indigenous groups differ in their efficacy. The authors suggest that indigenous methods of conflict resolution are more effective than non-indigenous methods by demonstrating that subjects from the Outline of Cultural Materials (OCM) associated with indigenous conflict management (ICM) will co-occur less frequently with OCM terms related to conflict than subjects related to non-ICM. They tested this by selecting OCM subjects that they felt best represented ICM, non-ICM, and instances of conflict and using chi-square tests to show how often these subjects co-occurred. They subsequently split up the "conflict" variable into four forms of conflict in order to show whether any of these forms might be more frequently found associated with ICM or non-ICM subjects. The results showed that conflict subjects were more likely to co-occur with non-ICM subjects, and that sociocultural/interpersonal conflicts were more likely to be associated with ICM subjects, whereas political conflicts were more likely to be associated with non-ICM subjects.

In this article, the authors explore cultural variables that they propose contribute to the maintenance of peace in non-warring societies. These variables are compared in 16 peaceful systems (as coded by the authors from anthropological and historical data) and in 30 warring societies taken from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS). Findings associate more peaceful cultures with peace systems, and non-peaceful cultures with warring societies.

This article posits a theory of social evolution based on agriculture. The author suggests that a society’s energy source, type of tool materials, and systems of agriculture constitute a variable cluster, and that they are associated with societal scale, economic differentiation, and mode of political integration. Empirical analysis supports this neoevolutionary theory of agriculture.

This article uses factor analysis to identify the key variables underlying the many cross-cultural associations reported by Textor (1967). Twelve factors are identified.

Feuding and other responses to malfeasance are examined cross-culturally. The geographic distribution of responses are presented and odds ratios/logistic regression models are employed in analyzing the effect of socio-economic, historical and ecological variables on responses to malfeasance. Codes are included.

An early cross-cultural study that sought to establish correlations between "stages" of economic culture and a variety of different social and political institutions, such as form of government and justice, marriage and kinship, and behaviors during warfare.

After studying Paiute society, the author postulates that sorcery may serve as a mechanism for social control in societies lacking superordinate authority justice. In this chapter, the cross-cultural results were presented.

This chapter examines the variables that are associated with the evil eye belief cross-culturally. Results suggest that the evil eye belief is significantly associated with various socioeconomic and demographic variables. All hypotheses are supported.