This paper presents a new global dataset on contemporary witchcraft beliefs and
investigates their correlates. Witchcraft beliefs cut across socio-demographic groups but are …

In this chapter, I consider the benefits of viewing history through an evolutionary lens. In
recent decades, a field of research has emerged, which builds on foundations from …

Witchcraft beliefs are historically and geographically widespread, but little is known about
the cultural inheritance processes that may explain their variation between populations. A …

Research testing evolutionary models of religious morality shows that supernatural beliefs in
moralizing gods positively affect prosociality. However, the effects of beliefs related to local …

What are the origins of differences in the pace of the demographic transition across African
societies, and how do these differences affect economic development? We address this …

Beliefs in witchcraft, or the ability of certain people to intentionally cause harm via
supernatural means, have been documented across societies all over the world. Extensive …

Columbus's arrival in the New World triggered an unprecedented movement of people and
crops across the Atlantic Ocean. We study a largely overlooked part of this Columbian …

Culture–the set of socially transmitted values and beliefs held by individuals–has important
implications for a wide variety of economic outcomes. Both the causes and consequences of …

How and why have colonial-era Christian missions brought about social change in the long
run? This paper addresses this question by causally estimating average and heterogeneous …

Cultural evolutionary approaches to religion have found that in small-scale societies,“local
gods”(LGs) usually care about ritual, in-group cooperation, and ecological challenges …