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PurposeThe main goal of this project is to study the wife‐battering in one of the traditional groups of semi‐nomadic herders of Eastern Africa, the Datoga of Northern Tanzania.Design/methodology/approachThe study examines wife‐battering among the Datoga pastoralists of Tanzania. The interviews with 142 women provide the information on types and regularity of wife‐beating in the Datoga. Data were collected by means of interviews. Women were asked if they quarreled with husbands or had ever been beaten by them. If the answer was positive, a woman was asked for details of the physical violence and post‐conflict interactions between the spouses and with relatives from the wife's side.FindingsAccording to these data, wife‐battering is a widespread practice among the traditionally‐living Datoga of Northern Tanzania – 47.19 percent of women in this study said that they had been beaten by husbands and of these, 14.79 percent stated that they had been injured by husbands. Aggression between spouses was highly asymmetrical; women were never trying to aggress back. The culture‐specific mechanisms of coping with wife‐battering were found to be still effective nowadays. The woman's father or brother is able to reprimand her husband for misbehavior and to demand a fine for the woman herself and for her relatives.Research limitations/implicationsCurrent research is limited by sample size, as well as due to the fact that interviews were mainly conducted with wives only.Practical implicationsCultural mechanisms of control over wife‐battering should be taken into consideration by local officials, while developing violence‐reduction programs.Social implicationsWhile discussing wife‐battering issues, cultural norms and mechanisms of conflict resolution should be considered even though information has been collected in a modern, urban environment.Originality/valueThe severity and frequency of wife‐battering in Datoga is positively related to the number of co‐wives, as well as to the history of a woman's physical aggression. To social workers and governmental organizations dealing with conflicts between spouses in multiethnic communities, it should be important to take the cultural context and to look for traditional mechanisms of conflict resolution, if such mechanisms are available.

The article presents the results of a facial anthropometric study suggesting markers of masculinity in motorcycle racers (n = 36), mountain climbers (n = 52), and students (n = 56). The use of geometric morphometrics on the basis of frontal photographs enabled the authors to describe and visualize the facial shapes of men from these three groups, and to reveal significant intergroup differences. Facial shapes of mountain climbers, racers, and students (control sample) were compared pairwise using multivariate regression analysis. The racers and climbers had more masculine facial features compared to the control group: larger, more elongated faces, with a large jaw, thin lips, and narrow eye shape. The differences identified by geometric morphometrics were also confirmed by an additional analysis of facial indices based on linear measurements of certain facial parameters. The findings prove the high efficiency of using a combination of geometric and classical morphometry methods to study full facial shape, as well as to quantify observed differences in certain facial areas.

This study was conducted on children and adolescents from the three tribal cultures from Northern Tanzania: the Hadza, the Datoga and the Iraq. The comparative data on aggression and conflict management skills were measured at Endomaga Boarding School, Lake Eyasi, Mangola in Northern Tanzania, in 2005-2006. The final sample included 219 children, ranging from 7 to 20 years of age. No sex differences were found in self-ratings or frequency of occurrence of physical, verbal and indirect aggression in Iraq children and adolescents, or in self-ratings in Hadza. Hadza boys reported a higher occurrence of physical and indirect aggression during the previous week compared to girls. No differences between the sexes were found in constructive conflict resolution and third-party interventions practiced by Iraq and Datoga children and self-ratings in Hadza. Hadza boys reported a higher frequency of constructive conflict resolution and third-party interventions compared to girls. Significant sexual dimorphism on the 2D:4D ratio was found for our African sample. A significant negative correlation between the right hand 2D:4D ratio and ratings on physical aggression was found for the girls. The girls with the lowest finger index estimated themselves as more verbally aggressive, compared to girls with a medium 2D:4D ratio. Adapted from the source document.

Recent studies show that the global increase in gender equality does not reduce gender differences in values. These findings somewhat undermine the social role theory and increase the need for additional explanations. These findings also imply that gender differences in values may stem from some underlying universalities that persist even through changes associated with socio-economic development. This gives us reason to explore an evolutionary perspective on gender differences in values. We discuss evolutionary mechanisms that could underlie certain universal gender differences in values, and then test whether these differences are truly universal across the world (we use data from World Values Survey to search for empirical support for our evolutionary hypotheses). We provide evidence for the global scale of gender differences in religiosity, family values, political values, and pro-social values through our calculations.

The study of the evolution of altruism and cooperation in human society is one of the central topics of modern anthropology. A promising approach to solving this problem is a comparative study of the behavior of cooperation and sharing of limited resources in a cross-cultural and ontogenetic perspective. The aim of this study was to analyze the principles of sharing the limited resources among children in two traditional African societies: Hadza and Iraqw. A statistical assessment of the contribution of a number of factors to the adoption of prosocial, egoistic and altruistic decisions in the direction of members of own group and strangers is presented. The sample was represented by 240 children and adolescents (130 Hadza and 110 Iraqw). Studies were conducted in rural areas of Northern Tanzania. The current results, along with the data on Meru children, obtained by us earlier, revealed that positive social selectivity (friendship) has an important stimulating role in making decisions of a prosocial and altruistic nature in children and adolescents in traditional African societies. For hunter-gatherers, the percentage of individuals focused on selfish and mixed sharing strategies, both in direction of friends and strangers, was higher compared with farmers. Along with that, we demonstrated a positive association between the adoption of altruistic decisions about sharing and the subjective happiness. Presumably, such association is a human universal.

The COVID-19 restrictions have impacted people's lifestyles in all spheres (social, psychological, political, economic, and others). This study explored which factors affected the level of anxiety during the time of the first wave of COVID-19 and subsequent quarantine in a substantial proportion of 23 countries, included in this study. The data was collected from May to August 2020 (5 June 2020). The sample included 15,375 participants from 23 countries: (seven from Europe: Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Russia; 11 from West, South and Southeast Asia: Armenia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Turkey; two African: Nigeria and Tanzania; and three from North, South, and Central America: Brazil, Canada, United States). Level of anxiety was measured by means of the 7-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7) and the 20-item first part of The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI)—State Anxiety Inventory (SAI). Respondents were also asked about their personal experiences with COVID-19, attitudes toward measures introduced by governments, changes in attitudes toward migrants during a pandemic, family income, isolation conditions, etc. The factor analysis revealed that four factors explained 45.08% of variance in increase of anxiety, and these components were interpreted as follows: (1) personal awareness of the threat of COVID-19, (2) personal reaction toward officially undertaken measures and attitudes to foreigners, (3) personal trust in official sources, (4) personal experience with COVID-19. Three out of four factors demonstrated strong associations with both scales of anxiety: high level of anxiety was significantly correlated with high level of personal awareness of the threat of COVID-19, low level of personal reaction toward officially undertaken measures and attitudes to foreigners, and high level of presence of personal experience with COVID-19. Our study revealed significant main effects of sex, country, and all four factors on the ...