Topic: Cultural History
Why Offspring of Rice Farmers Are Better at Detecting Emotions
Raising the crop is a communal project, more so than the work of wheat farmers, who’re less attuned to feelings of others
Why Can’t We All Get Along? On Some Things, We Do
The narrative of a growing cultural divide, while partly true, conceals a more nuanced picture
What Makes a Good Front-Line Manager — in Business and in War?
Civil War officers with working-class backgrounds held units together best
Viewing Multiracial People as Resilient, Rather than Burdened
Revisiting decades of research, scholars find a theory of psychological strength emerges
Using Ancestral Characteristics to Study Modern Economics
A database of pre-industrial sampling supports historical and ethnographic research
Testing 17 Theories on the Development of Complex Civilizations
Large-scale data project produces stark conclusion: military technology + agricultural productivity caused the takeoff
Societies With a Legacy of Herding: More Prone to Current Day Violence
A culture that valorized revenge among pre-industrial herders resonates today
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Rich People: Hated in China, Venerated in America?
Research suggests the nations actually have similar feelings toward wealth
Parents Who Favor Boys Raise Girls Who Score Lower in Math
A clue that parents prefer a son: They have more kids when their firstborn is a girl
Ownership Structure of Tribal Land Exacts a Multibillion-Dollar Penalty
Can’t sell it, can’t borrow against it, can’t develop it
Leadership Matters: Countries Suffered Under Poor Quality Monarchs
Measuring inbreeding allows study to isolate rulers from circumstances
Is a Bad Deed That Goes Unpunished Less Bad?
In experiments, immorality and harm are deemed more extreme merely because an act was punished
In Some Places, Fertility Rates Declined Before the Industrial Revolution
Using parish records, researchers examine fundamental changes in society following the French Revolution
How the Seemingly Rapid Advance of Democracy Goes Astray
Using voting records from a unique transition in the 19th-century Caribbean, Christian Dippel examines the embrace of self-interest by new legislators
How Local Governance Came to England’s Economy
Nico Voigtländer found that to combat arbitrary taxes and corruption, merchants persuaded the king to cede control