Pan-African Research Journal Africa
Published October 22, 2026 | Version v1
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Indigenous Dream Interpretation and Trauma-Related Avoidance Among Akan Help-Seekers: A Vignette Experiment on Divination-Based Causal Attribution and Treatment-Seeking

Authors/Creators

  • 1. Cairo University

Description

Akan divinatory practice treats certain dreams as ancestral communication that identifies a spiritual cause for misfortune, and this attribution may compete with biomedical explanations for trauma-related avoidance. The primary outcome was intended avoidance of trauma reminders; secondary outcomes were causal attribution and treatment-seeking intention. Ancestral-warning and witchcraft frames increased spiritual attribution relative to the biomedical frame, and spiritual attribution mediated the effect of frame on avoidance. Diviner-sourced interpretations produced higher avoidance than clinician-sourced interpretations only under the ancestral frame, indicating that source credibility and content interact rather than operate independently. The findings suggest that divination-based causal attribution is a modifiable mechanism linking indigenous dream interpretation to trauma-related avoidance, and that interventions addressing attribution may reduce avoidance without requiring rejection of indigenous cosmology.

Notes

Published in Studies in African Indigenous Psychology, vol 27, issue 2, pp 57-70. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23549648. A Pan-African Research Journals (PARJ Africa) publication, https://parj.africa

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