God, witchcraft, and beliefs about illness in Mauritius

Abstract

Why do people use supernatural concepts to explain and treat illness? In a Mauritian sample, we examined how uncertainty around the cause of symptoms, illness severity, and knowledge about past moral behavior, influenced participants’ tendency to attribute illnesses to God and/or witchcraft. We employed a preregistered vignette-based experiment to manipulate these variables in four illnesses and a combination of scaled and open-ended freelist questions about the causes and cures for each illness. Participants (N = 530) gave supernatural causes and cures for all illnesses. High uncertainty around the cause of the symptoms increased participants’ claims that the illness was caused by God. When the sick person had a history of immoral behavior, participants were more willing to attribute their illness to God and witchcraft and offered up 4 times more supernatural causes in freelists compared with a person with no such history. We found no evidence that severity influenced participants’ likelihood of suggesting supernatural causes or cures. Finally, when participants gave a supernatural cause, they were more likely to also indicate that the illness needed a supernatural cure (e.g., consulting a spiritual healer), suggesting that supernatural causes increase the need for supernatural cures.