experiment showed, we are most influenced in this fashion by the ac-
tions of others like us.
Therefore, Phillips reasoned, if the principle of social proof is behind
the phenomenon, there should be some clear similarity between the
victim of the highly publicized suicide and those who cause subsequent
wrecks. Realizing that the clearest test of this possibility would come
from the records of automobile crashes involving a single car and a lone
driver, Phillips compared the age of the suicide-story victim with the
ages of the lone drivers killed in single-car crashes immediately after
the story appeared in print. Once again the predictions were strikingly
accurate: When the newspaper detailed the suicide of a young person,
it was young drivers who then piled their cars into trees, poles, and
embankments with fatal results; but when the news story concerned
an older person’s suicide, older drivers died in such crashes.
This last statistic is the crusher for me. I am left wholly convinced
and, simultaneously, wholly amazed by it. Evidently, the principle of
social proof is so wide-ranging and powerful that its domain extends
to the fundamental decision for life or death. Professor Phillips’s findings
have persuaded me of a distressing tendency for suicide publicity to
motivate certain people who are similar to the victim to kill them-
selves—because they now find the idea of suicide more legitimate.
Truly frightening are the data indicating that many innocent people
die in the bargain. A glance at the graphs documenting the undeniable
increase in traffic and air fatalities following publicized suicides, espe-
cially those involving murder, is enough to cause concern for one’s own
safety. I have been sufficiently affected by these statistics to begin to
take note of front-page suicide stories and to change my behavior in
the period after their appearance. I try to be especially cautious behind
the wheel of my car. I am reluctant to take extended trips requiring a
lot of air travel. If I must fly during such a period, I purchase substan-
tially more flight insurance than I normally would. Dr. Phillips has
done us a service by demonstrating that the odds for survival when we
travel change measurably for a time following the publication of certain
kinds of front-page suicide stories. It would seem only prudent to play
those odds.
As if the frightening features of Phillips’s suicide data weren’t enough,
his subsequent research brings more cause for alarm: Homicides in this
country have a stimulated, copycat character after highly publicized
acts of violence. Heavyweight championship prize fights that receive
coverage on network evening news appear to produce measurable in-
creases in the U.S. homicide rate. This analysis of heavyweight champi-
onship fights (between 1973 and 1978) is perhaps most compelling in
its demonstration of the remarkably specific nature of the imitative
Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 113