CULTURAL-DIVERSITY IN CAUSAL ATTRIBUTIONS FOR ILLNESS - THE ROLE OF THE SUPERNATURAL

We investigated cultural diversity in beliefs about the causes of illn ess and assessed the possibility that popular free-form methodologies (asking subjects to generate causes) inhibit minorities from expressin g their belief in supernatural causes. As predicted, when asked to gen erate causes of illness and rate these in terms of their importance, w hites and minorities did not differ in the number or type (natural vs supernatural) of causes they generated or in the importance rating the y assigned to these. However, when these same subjects were provided w ith natural and supernatural causes to rate.in terms of importance, mi norities rated supernatural causes significantly more important than d id whites, and more minorities than whites endorsed such causes. Cultu ral differences in causal attributions for illness are examined, and t he role of methodology in determining such attributions is highlighted .