A Deceptive Curing Practice in Hunter–Gatherer Societies

Bibliographic Data

ID6014666
AuthorsWilliam Buckner (0000-0001-9786-2384, Boston University, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume2
Issue3
Pages95-103
Publication date2022-08-11
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHumans (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2673-9461 • E-ISSN: 2673-9461
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/humans2030007
OpenAlexW4291000458
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited33

The claim of possessing supernatural abilities is a commonly reported phenomenon across human societies. To bolster the credibility of such claims, performers may make use of illusions and sleight of hand to give the appearance of impressive powers. One common trick found among culturally independent hunter–gatherers on every continent they inhabit involves a healer ostensibly extracting from a sick person an object, such as a pebble or insect, that is supposedly causing the patient’s illness. The use and functions of the ‘extraction trick’ are here explored across a global sample of hunter–gatherer societies (N = 74), with attention given to the possible costs and benefits accrued by performers and their patients or audiences. This and similar tricks can be highly deceptive, but they can also be undertaken for entertainment, symbolic reasons, their placebo-like utility to sick patients, or some mixture of each. The recurrent invention of the trick across independent societies, as well as its cultural inheritance and diffusion between groups, indicates that it likely appeals to certain universal facets of human psychology, where experiences of sickness and pain commonly induce one to seek interventive cures from specialists, who in turn may use deceptive displays to give the appearance of greater skill and powers

Aesthetics · Art · Cognitive psychology · Entertainment · Epistemology · Hunter-gatherer · Illusion · Phenomenon · Political science · Sociology · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment · Social Psychology

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