Airplane Accidents, Murder, and the Mass Media: Towards a Theory of Imitation and Suggestion

This paper presents evidence indicating that imitation & suggestion have a powerful effect on social behaviour. The major findings are that after publicized murder-suicide stories there is an increase in air crashes in the USA, this increase persists for approximately 9 days, & the greater the publicity given to a murder-suicide story, the greater the increase in air crashes. The second half of the paper discusses a sociological theory of imitation & suggestion. (43 refs.)