From Dissonance to Tolerance: Toward Managing Health in Tropical Cultures

Against a backdrop in which in which psychology is being increasingly criticised for failing to meet the pressing needs of Third World' peoples, we report findings from Malawi relevant to the management of health services in the tropics. Surveys of beliefs regarding malaria, schistosom iasis, epilepsy and psychiatric symptomatology have all revealed a remarkable "tropical tolerance "forboth modern medical and traditional forms of health service: belief in the "medical" consistently does not preclude belief in the "traditional", and vice versa. This paper presents reliable psychological evidence which may refute the universality of the dissonance reduction process, while supporting the integration of "traditional" types of health care into the predominantly "medical" and extremely understaffed Malawian health care system We derive hypotheses from this newly appreciated the oretical axis which may also have applications in other developing societies.