A re-analysis of the relationship between a??parasite stressa?? and authoritarianism

摘要

This paper is a commentary on Murray et al. (2013) where, alongside other findings, data from two cross-cultural samples (nations and cultures), supporting a positive relationship between pathogen prevalence and authoritarianism are presented. This commentary is not a theoretical critique (see the comments on Fincher and Thornhill, 2012, for example, or an alternative: Hackman and Hruschka, 2013). Nor is it a methodological critique of work on pathogen stress (e.g., Currie and Mace, 2012; Pollet, 2013; Pollet et al., in press). The goal of this brief commentary is to re-analyze the data with an alternative technique to examine whether the original conclusions are upheld, specifically the claim that indices of pathogen prevalence are positively related to authoritarianism. To this end, I use a relatively novel technique from machine learning: “Conditional inference trees.”.