Joseph Watts

3.9k total citations · 2 hit papers
42 papers, 2.3k citations indexed

About

Joseph Watts is a scholar working on Sociology and Political Science, Cultural Studies and Social Psychology. According to data from OpenAlex, Joseph Watts has authored 42 papers receiving a total of 2.3k indexed citations (citations by other indexed papers that have themselves been cited), including 20 papers in Sociology and Political Science, 12 papers in Cultural Studies and 8 papers in Social Psychology. Recurrent topics in Joseph Watts's work include Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (15 papers), Language and cultural evolution (12 papers) and Cultural Differences and Values (7 papers). Joseph Watts is often cited by papers focused on Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (15 papers), Language and cultural evolution (12 papers) and Cultural Differences and Values (7 papers). Joseph Watts collaborates with scholars based in New Zealand, United States and Germany. Joseph Watts's co-authors include Russell D. Gray, Kevin M. Weeks, Ronald Swanstrom, Robert J. Gorelick, Christopher W. Leonard, Julian W. Bess, Kristen K. Dang, Christina L. Burch, Quentin D. Atkinson and Stephen McElroy and has published in prestigious journals such as Nature, Science and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In The Last Decade

Joseph Watts

39 papers receiving 2.2k citations

Hit Papers

align trajectories

What are hit papers?

Hit papers significantly outperform the citation benchmark for their cohort. A paper qualifies if it has ≥500 total citations, achieves ≥1.5× the top-1% citation threshold for papers in the same subfield and year (this is the minimum needed to enter the top 1%, not the average within it), or reaches the top citation threshold in at least one of its specific research topics.

Architecture and secondary structure of an entire HIV-1 RNA genome

2009 625 citations Joseph Watts et al. profile →
Emotion semantics show both cultural variation and universal structure

2019 229 citations Joshua Conrad Jackson, Joseph Watts et al. Science profile →

Peers — A (Enhanced Table)

Peers by citation overlap · career bar shows stage (early→late) cites · hero ref

Name	h						Papers	Cites
Joseph Watts New Zealand	22	725	368	345	277	249	42	2.3k
Sohini Ramachandran United States	21	886 1.2×	163 0.4×	95 0.3×	15 0.1×	257 1.0×	46	4.3k
Melinda A. Zeder United States	34	358 0.5×	320 0.9×	222 0.6×	24 0.1×	1.2k 4.8×	62	6.2k
Sahotra Sarkar United States	40	572 0.8×	393 1.1×	178 0.5×	43 0.2×	1.3k 5.3×	188	5.4k
Colin Smith Australia	28	318 0.4×	314 0.9×	227 0.7×	15 0.1×	773 3.1×	124	4.6k
Matthew R. E. Symonds Australia	33	223 0.3×	144 0.4×	356 1.0×	55 0.2×	2.1k 8.6×	103	5.2k
M.W. Feldman United States	19	628 0.9×	416 1.1×	152 0.4×	14 0.1×	387 1.6×	30	3.2k
Stanley N. Salthe United States	25	283 0.4×	300 0.8×	89 0.3×	323 1.2×	420 1.7×	88	2.7k
William H. Bossert United States	29	702 1.0×	206 0.6×	192 0.6×	23 0.1×	1.1k 4.4×	49	4.6k
James E. Mosimann United States	24	335 0.5×	104 0.3×	322 0.9×	59 0.2×	732 2.9×	49	4.0k
Michael Balter Germany	19	210 0.3×	104 0.3×	108 0.3×	7 0.0×	71 0.3×	261	1.3k

Countries citing papers authored by Joseph Watts

Since Specialization

Citations

This map shows the geographic impact of Joseph Watts's research. It shows the number of citations coming from papers published by authors working in each country. You can also color the map by specialization and compare the number of citations received by Joseph Watts with the expected number of citations based on a country's size and research output (numbers larger than one mean the country cites Joseph Watts more than expected).

Fields of papers citing papers by Joseph Watts

Since Specialization

Physical SciencesHealth SciencesLife SciencesSocial Sciences

This network shows the impact of papers produced by Joseph Watts. Nodes represent research fields, and links connect fields that are likely to share authors. Colored nodes show fields that tend to cite the papers produced by Joseph Watts. The network helps show where Joseph Watts may publish in the future.

Co-authorship network of co-authors of Joseph Watts

This figure shows the co-authorship network connecting the top 25 collaborators of Joseph Watts. A scholar is included among the top collaborators of Joseph Watts based on the total number of citations received by their joint publications. Widths of edges represent the number of papers authors have co-authored together. Node borders signify the number of papers an author published with Joseph Watts. Joseph Watts is excluded from the visualization to improve readability, since they are connected to all nodes in the network.

All Works

Sort: Min cites: Since: Top N: Style:

20 of 20 papers shown

Watts, Joseph, et al.. (2025). Building faith: the relationships between materials, form, and worship in pre-industrial religious architecture. Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology. 9. 100231–100231.

Schaffnit, Susan B., Abigail E. Page, Robert Lynch, et al.. (2024). Religious women receive more allomaternal support from non-partner kin in two low-fertility countries. Evolution and Human Behavior. 45(3). 268–280. 2 indexed citations

Wildman, Wesley J., Robert M. Ross, Ryan McKay, et al.. (2024). Religion, Brain & Behavior adopts stricter transparency standards. Religion Brain & Behavior. 14(4). 341–344.

Jackson, Joshua Conrad, et al.. (2023). Supernatural explanations across 114 societies are more common for natural than social phenomena. Nature Human Behaviour. 7(5). 707–717. 9 indexed citations

Jackson, Joshua Conrad, et al.. (2022). Valence-dependent mutation in lexical evolution. Nature Human Behaviour. 7(2). 190–199. 8 indexed citations

Passmore, Sam & Joseph Watts. (2022). WEIRD people and the Western Church: who made whom?. Religion Brain & Behavior. 12(3). 304–311. 2 indexed citations

Watts, Joseph, et al.. (2022). The varied experience of undergraduate students during the transition to mandatory online chem lab during the initial lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic. SHILAP Revista de lepidopterología. 4(1). 14–14. 5 indexed citations

Watts, Joseph, et al.. (2022). Food storage facilitates professional religious specialization in hunter–gatherer societies. Evolutionary Human Sciences. 4. e17–e17. 3 indexed citations

Watts, Joseph, et al.. (2021). The Austronesian Game Taxonomy: A cross-cultural dataset of historical games. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. 8(1). 1 indexed citations

10.

Jackson, Joshua Conrad, et al.. (2021). From Text to Thought: How Analyzing Language Can Advance Psychological Science. Perspectives on Psychological Science. 17(3). 805–826. 84 indexed citations

11.

Evans, Cara L., Simon J. Greenhill, Joseph Watts, et al.. (2021). The uses and abuses of tree thinking in cultural evolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences. 376(1828). 20200056–20200056. 28 indexed citations

12.

Shaver, John H., Eleanor A. Power, Benjamin Grant Purzycki, et al.. (2020). Church attendance and alloparenting: an analysis of fertility, social support and child development among English mothers. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences. 375(1805). 20190428–20190428. 31 indexed citations

13.

Jackson, Joshua Conrad, Joseph Watts, Teague R. Henry, et al.. (2019). Emotion semantics show both cultural variation and universal structure. Science. 366(6472). 1517–1522. 229 indexed citations breakdown →

14.

Sheehan, Oliver, Joseph Watts, Russell D. Gray, & Quentin D. Atkinson. (2018). Coevolution of landesque capital intensive agriculture and sociopolitical hierarchy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 115(14). 3628–3633. 32 indexed citations

15.

Purzycki, Benjamin Grant & Joseph Watts. (2018). Reinvigorating the comparative, cooperative ethnographic sciences of religion. MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society). 38(3). 26–29. 7 indexed citations

16.

Watts, Joseph, et al.. (2018). Hunter-gatherer Religion Database (HGRD). OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints). 1 indexed citations

17.

Gray, Russell D. & Joseph Watts. (2017). Cultural macroevolution matters. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 114(30). 7846–7852. 44 indexed citations

18.

Watts, Joseph, Simon J. Greenhill, Quentin D. Atkinson, et al.. (2015). Broad supernatural punishment but not moralizing high gods precede the evolution of political complexity in Austronesia. Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences. 282(1804). 20142556–20142556. 129 indexed citations

19.

Elkins, P.A., Joseph Watts, Magdalena Zalacaín, et al.. (2003). Insights into Catalysis by a Knotted TrmD tRNA Methyltransferase. Journal of Molecular Biology. 333(5). 931–949. 107 indexed citations

20.

Miller, Jay, et al.. (2003). Cluster analysis of structural stage classes to map wildland fuels in a Madrean ecosystem. Journal of Environmental Management. 68(3). 239–252. 27 indexed citations

Rankless uses publication and citation data sourced from OpenAlex, an open and comprehensive bibliographic database. While OpenAlex provides broad and valuable coverage of the global research landscape, it—like all bibliographic datasets—has inherent limitations. These include incomplete records, variations in author disambiguation, differences in journal indexing, and delays in data updates. As a result, some metrics and network relationships displayed in Rankless may not fully capture the entirety of a scholar's output or impact.

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