Culture, personality, and behavior: a field study in Jerusalem

In the setting of Jerusalem's Eastern-Jewish immigrant communities, the author tests the hypothesis that non-Western societies have a theory of disease causation which is at variance with a Western model. What emerges from participant observation, informal interviews, and a formal questionnaire supports the hypothesis, reveals changing attitudes over time, and identifies a category of disease-causation which merits further investigation. These observations may be valuable in the identification of epidemiological aspects of disturbed behavior associated with supernatural beliefs.