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Tue 8 Apr, 2003 03:52 pm
A man has died after setting himself on fire in the sixth incident of its kind in the Czech Republic in little more than a month.
Three of the six have died.
Self-immolation hits Czech Republic
Not really Walter, it's likely that such activity will influence decisions in others. It's studied as contagion psychology, or copy-cat behaviour.
It is also dramatic, and affords the deceased their "15 minutes of fame", even posthumously. Often, people who commit suicide are depressed, and have low self esteem. Many have made suicidal gestures in the past, before they commit the final act. By self immolation, they really have gotten the attention that they wanted.
Phoenix32890 wrote:. By self immolation, they really have gotten the attention that they wanted.
That's excactly what I think, Phoenix.
And because the first couple got so much 'public attraction' in the media ....
Self immolation is quite a popular form of protest in India
Had a bit of think about this and there is a very pertinent lesson made in the book by Cialdini called "Persuasion". I can't find the text, so this summary will do:
Now we get to the Werther effect. Over 200 years ago, Goethe
published a novel entitled "The Sorrows of Young Werther". The hero
of this novel ends up committing suicide. After publication of this
novel in Europe, a wave of suicide among young people occurred
in the readers. Several countries banned the novel for this reason.
In the 1970's, D.P. Phillips was struck by the apparent increase in
suicides following a highly publicized suicide - it is rumoured that the
death of Marilyn Munroe was the event which started his investigations.
What Phillips noticed was that following a newsworthy suicide, there was
a sharp increase in commercial airliner crashes and automobile
fatalities. The net result is that a single highly publicized death is
accompanied by a 1000% increase in airliner crashes, increased MVA
deaths, and imitative suicides. The ratio of secondary deaths is at
least 35 to 1. A check of the literature on medline today revealed that
recent studies in a number of different countries have continued to
provide strong evidence for the Werther effect.
Why would there be an increase in commercial airline crashes after a
suicide? An explanation provided by Cialdini (1993) is that certain
pilots may be very depressed, but coping. They would like to kill
themselves, but are afraid of the trauma they will cause their families
through their actions. A highly publicized suicide may be enough to give
them a way out - all it takes is a small dip in the nose of the aircraft
at a crucial point in takeoff, or some other "accidental" event. Similar
considerations apply to the dead drivers - all it takes is a small
deviation of the steering wheel to the left while driving in pouring rain
on a highway to cause a head-on collision, and an "accidental" death.
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