Understanding the causal impact of beliefs on contributions in Threshold Public Goods (TPGs) is particularly important since the social optimum can be supported as a Nash Equilibrium and best-response contributions are a function of beliefs. Unfortunately, investigations of the impact of beliefs on behavior are plagued with endogeneity concerns. We create a set of instruments by cleanly and exo...

This paper re-examines the evidence of the Scottish witchcraft trials for beliefs associated by scholars with “elf-shot.” Some supposed evidence for elf-shot is dismissed, but other material illuminates the interplay between illness, healing and fairy-lore in early modern Scotland, and the relationship of these beliefs to witchcraft itself.

This study examines the beliefs and understandings concerning diarrhoea among 2 groups of Zimbabwean women. Mothers with formal education are compared to those with less formal education. Differences and commonalities of beliefs are examined. The findings show that traditional explanations of an illness such as diarrhoea can inhibit health education campaigns against this disease which kills ma...

Evaluation of causal reasoning models depends on how well the subjects' causal beliefs are assessed. Elicitation of causal beliefs is determined by the experimental questions put to subjects. We examined the impact of question formats commonly used in causal reasoning research on participant's responses. The results of our experiment (Study 1) demonstrate that both the mean and homogeneity of t...

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES To explore beliefs about diet and traditional Chinese medicine related to the breast cancer experience of Hong Kong Chinese women and their families. DESIGN Interpretive phenomenology. SETTING Hong Kong, China. SAMPLE A purposive sample of 20 Hong Kong Chinese women diagnosed with breast cancer at various stages of the illness trajectory and at least one other family me...

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a serious mental illness, characterized in part by intense and irrational beliefs about shape and weight, including fear of gaining weight. Although these beliefs are considered to be a diagnostic criterion for the illness, they have not been systematically characterized. This study used the Brown Assessment of Beliefs Scale (BABS) to identify the dominant belief that i...

OBJECTIVES The main aims of the present study were to explore the illness representations of individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS) and investigate the relationship of these beliefs to outcome. Based on Leventhal et al.'s self-regulation model, the commonly accepted generic five-component structure of illness representations including identity, time-line, consequences, cause, and cure/control...