Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 20, 2026

Reducing State Anxiety Using Working Memory Maintenance
Published on: July 19, 2017
Ergotism and the Salem witch panic: a critical analysis and an alternative conceptualization
Abstract:
The controversial hypothesis that the Salem witchcraft panic of 1692 resulted from ergot poisoning was recently defended by Mary Matossian. She argued that (a) weather conditions in Salem were conducive to the growth of ergot, (b) new evidence concerning the age distribution of ergot sufferers is consistent with the ages of those who exhibited symptoms at Salem, and (c) the symptoms displayed and reported at Salem were those of convulsive ergotism. Each of these propositions is critically examined and rejected, and the events purportedly explained by the ergot hypothesis are accounted for within a social psychological framework. This perspective views the Salem crisis as a sociopolitical drama played out in terms of the worldview shared by seventeenth-century Puritans. The symptoms of demonic affliction are conceptualized as role enactments learned in and legitimated by the community, rather than as the results of disease.
More Related Videos
06:42Continuous Theta Burst Stimulation of the Posterior Medial Frontal Cortex to Experimentally Reduce Ideological Threat Responses
Published on: September 28, 2018
05:22Dissociation of the Confounding Influences of Expectancy and Integrative Difficulty Residing in Anomalous Sentences in Event-related Potential Studies
Published on: May 9, 2019
Related Concept Videos
Stereotype Content Model
Horney's Sociocultural Approach
Lazarus's Cognitive Appraisal Theory
Primary Appraisal:...
Panic Disorder
Psychosurgery
Historical Development of Psychosurgery
In the 1930s, Portuguese neurologist Antonio Egas Moniz introduced a surgical procedure designed...
Magical Thinking