This study investigates the cross-cultural prevalence of seven moral values proposed by the "morality-as-cooperation" theory using a machine-reading approach. The researchers developed a new Morality-as-Cooperation Dictionary (MAC-D) and used Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) to analyze ethnographic accounts of morality from 256 societies, including the entire Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) corpus. The findings support the theory that these seven moral values—family values, group loyalty, reciprocity, heroism, deference, fairness, and property rights—are present in most societies across all cultural regions. The new method allows for the detection of minor variations in moral values across regions and subsistence strategies, and the machine-coding was validated against previous hand-coding. The study extends previous research that used hand-coding of ethnographic accounts from 60 societies, finding that most of the seven moral values were present in most societies with equal frequency across cultural regions. The new method, MAC-D, provides a comprehensive and validated tool for machine-reading moral corpora. The researchers also found that the machine-coding results were largely consistent with the hand-coding results, although there were some discrepancies, particularly in the overestimation of moral prevalence in some cases. The study highlights the importance of cross-cultural research in understanding the universality of moral values. It also discusses the limitations of the current study, including the reliance on the HRAF corpus, which may not fully represent the global diversity of moral values. The researchers suggest that future studies should use more systematic and representative data sources to further test the cross-cultural robustness of the MAC theory. Additionally, the study emphasizes the need for further research into the relationship between specific moral values and individual- and societal-level indicators of cooperation. The study also notes the potential of using other natural language processing tools to better understand the context of moral values and their variations. Overall, the study provides compelling evidence for the universality of moral values and the potential of machine-reading approaches in cross-cultural moral research.This study investigates the cross-cultural prevalence of seven moral values proposed by the "morality-as-cooperation" theory using a machine-reading approach. The researchers developed a new Morality-as-Cooperation Dictionary (MAC-D) and used Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) to analyze ethnographic accounts of morality from 256 societies, including the entire Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) corpus. The findings support the theory that these seven moral values—family values, group loyalty, reciprocity, heroism, deference, fairness, and property rights—are present in most societies across all cultural regions. The new method allows for the detection of minor variations in moral values across regions and subsistence strategies, and the machine-coding was validated against previous hand-coding. The study extends previous research that used hand-coding of ethnographic accounts from 60 societies, finding that most of the seven moral values were present in most societies with equal frequency across cultural regions. The new method, MAC-D, provides a comprehensive and validated tool for machine-reading moral corpora. The researchers also found that the machine-coding results were largely consistent with the hand-coding results, although there were some discrepancies, particularly in the overestimation of moral prevalence in some cases. The study highlights the importance of cross-cultural research in understanding the universality of moral values. It also discusses the limitations of the current study, including the reliance on the HRAF corpus, which may not fully represent the global diversity of moral values. The researchers suggest that future studies should use more systematic and representative data sources to further test the cross-cultural robustness of the MAC theory. Additionally, the study emphasizes the need for further research into the relationship between specific moral values and individual- and societal-level indicators of cooperation. The study also notes the potential of using other natural language processing tools to better understand the context of moral values and their variations. Overall, the study provides compelling evidence for the universality of moral values and the potential of machine-reading approaches in cross-cultural moral research.