This paper is concerned with the variation in sexual behavior in humans. Authors test hypotheses regarding the relationships between sexual behaviors and beliefs concerning sex.

Previous studies have proposed a model of sexual selection that dictates that along with female and male choice, parental choice constitutes a significant sexual selection force in our species. This article aims at examining whether this model can also account for the mating patterns typical of agricultural and pastoral societies. The hypotheses are supported by the results presented.

Previous cross-cultural studies of romantic love have, in the authors' view, been plagued by vague definitions of the concept and a conflation of cultural, bio-psychological, and social factors. Thus, the authors distinguish between the social aspect of romantic love (which they argue is a universal human predisposition) and the variable cultural valuation of romance. In a large cross-cultural sample, the authors test the hypotheses that gender equality and family organization are important predictors of the cultural valuation of romantic love.

Textor summarizes cross-cultural findings on polygyny pertaining to cultural, environmental, psychological, and social phenomena.

The authors of this study investigate both intimate partner violence (IPV) in Africa and tolerance towards it. Merging Demographic and Health Survey data with information from the Ethnographic Atlas, they take into account a wide range of ancestral characteristics that could influence domestic violence today, including precolonial economic roles and marriage traditions. Their findings indicate that societies in which men were dominant in subsistence and/or had androcentric marital practices have more IPV today, and more acceptance of it. They also find an interesting gender gap in acceptance of IPV, in which women are more likely than men to justify domestic violence.

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.

This article suggests that Spiro's (1965) study on typology of social structure used a biased cross-cultural sample and possibly obscured regional patterns in data. Hypotheses related to marital structure, descent rules, food production and social stratification are tested.

This book provides a summary of data available in the Ethnographic Atlas. Social, political, economic, and kinship variables are included, as well as information about religious beliefs, social restrictions, and games. Data is divided into world areas for the purposes of regional comparison.

This article tests Randall Collin's 1975 theory that political-economic factors, rather than family/kinship factors, predict the degree of sexual stratification in a given society. A multivariate model is tested and findings contradict the theory.

The authors of this study investigate both intimate partner violence (IPV) in Africa and tolerance towards it. Merging Demographic and Health Survey data with information from the Ethnographic Atlas, they take into account a wide range of ancestral characteristics that could influence domestic violence today, including precolonial economic roles and marriage traditions. Their findings indicate that societies in which men were dominant in subsistence and/or had androcentric marital practices have more IPV today, and more acceptance of it. They also find an interesting gender gap in acceptance of IPV, in which women are more likely than men to justify domestic violence.