Witchcraft beliefs around the world: An exploratory analysis.
Journal
PloS one
ISSN: 1932-6203
Titre abrégé: PLoS One
Pays: United States
ID NLM: 101285081
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
2022
2022
Historique:
received:
18
05
2022
accepted:
15
10
2022
entrez:
23
11
2022
pubmed:
24
11
2022
medline:
26
11
2022
Statut:
epublish
Résumé
This paper presents a new global dataset on contemporary witchcraft beliefs and investigates their correlates. Witchcraft beliefs cut across socio-demographic groups but are less widespread among the more educated and economically secure. Country-level variation in the prevalence of witchcraft beliefs is systematically linked to a number of cultural, institutional, psychological, and socioeconomic characteristics. Consistent with their hypothesized function of maintaining order and cohesion in the absence of effective governance mechanisms, witchcraft beliefs are more widespread in countries with weak institutions and correlate positively with conformist culture and in-group bias. Among the documented potential costs of witchcraft beliefs are disrupted social relations, high levels of anxiety, pessimistic worldview, lack of entrepreneurial culture and innovative activity.
Identifiants
pubmed: 36417350
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0276872
pii: PONE-D-22-14517
pmc: PMC9683553
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
e0276872Informations de copyright
Copyright: © 2022 Boris Gershman. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
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