This article presents a replication of Somersan's (1984) study of the relationship between death symbolism and descent group. The unsuccessful replication is attributed to sampling error. Codes are included.

This book examines naming practices cross-culturally. The author posits that naming practices help to both reflect and create conceptions of personal identity. Several correlations between name meanings and practices and various sociocultural variables are presented.

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.

This dissertation discusses the divided theoretical approach to how reincarnation, animism, spirits, and general religious beliefs occur within societies cross-culturally. Matlock offers evidence to support Tyler, contradicting the generally accepted Durkheimian approach, arguing that the belief about souls and spirits may originate in dreams and other empirical experiences, in turn informing and shaping social organization. Durkheim argued the opposite, claiming that religious beliefs reflect social organization such as the clan and kinship. The author states 33 quantitative hypotheses to be tested using 30 of the first 60 sample societies available in the HRAF Probability Sample.

This book chapter builds on Horton's 1943 psychoanalytical study of drunkenness. The author tests an overall theory that drunkenness, which facilitates personal and uninhibited interactions, is more acceptable, and therefore prevalent, in societies with loose, rather than rigid, social relationships. Indicators of social rigidity, such as strict socialization or male dominance through patrilocality, are tested for relationships to drunkenness.

What is the evolutionary sequence of beliefs in hunter-gatherers? The authors attempt to answer this question by reconstructing the development of various traits in traditional societies using phylogenetic and linguistic source trees. Testing for correlated evolution between this reconstruction and population history as proxied by linguistic classification suggests the presence of animism at profound time depth, aligning with classical anthropological religious theory put forth by E.B. Tylor. Coevolutions between other religious concepts including shamanism, ancestor worship, active ancestor worship, high gods, active high gods, and belief in an afterlife are also examined.

Textor summarizes cross-cultural findings on the status of women in relation to cultural, environmental, psychological, and social phenomena.

This article retests several hypotheses from Swanson’s (1960) study on the origins of religious belief. The author finds support for an association between high gods and large communities, multiple levels of political hierarchy, and social differentiation. No support is found for Swanson’s other hypotheses concerning polytheism, ancestral spirits, reincarnation, the soul, witchcraft, and morality and their relations to social, political, and economic variables.

The study builds on a previous study with the Maasai suggesting that matrilineal descent will close that gap of competitive behavior between men and women. The author conducted a lab experiment consisting of 614 individuals representative of 27 ethnic groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the experiment, the participants completed a timed matching game. First, they played alone with the goal to complete 5 games within 5 minutes to win money. Next, they competed against an undisclosed opponent to complete the most games and to keep all of the winnings. Finally, the participants were able to choose which pay they preferred based solely on the results from the first round. This was designed to reflect competition preference and results indicated that women were less likely to engage in competition regardless of kinship system.

This book investigates the origins of supernatural and religious beliefs. The author tests associations between various types of beliefs (e.g. witchcraft, monotheism) and various societal characteristics (e.g. mobility, class stratification). Many hypotheses are supported. Theoretical discussion is included, and the author posits that “the belief in a particular kind of spirit springs from experiences with a type of persisting sovereign group whose area of jurisdiction corresponds to that attributed to the spirit” (175).