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How much cultural variation around the globe is explained by ecology?
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Description: How much cultural variation is explained by the physical and social ecologies people inhabit? Here, we provide an answer using nine ecological variables and 66 cultural variables (including personality traits, values, and norms) drawn from the EcoCultural Dataset. We generate a range of estimates by using different statistical metrics (e.g., current levels, average levels across time, unpredictability across time) of each of the ecological variables. Our results suggest that, on average, ecology explains a substantial amount of human cultural variation, depending on the metrics used, with current levels and average levels across time on average explaining the greatest amounts of variance in human culture (16% and 20% respectively).