aggression that is generated. When such a match was lost by a black
fighter, the homicide rate during the following ten days rose signific-
antly for young black male victims but not young white males. On the
other hand, when a white fighter lost a match, it was young white men
but not young black men who were killed more frequently in the next
ten days.^14 When these results are combined with the parallel findings
in Phillips’s suicide data, it is clear that widely publicized aggression
has the nasty tendency to spread to similar victims, no matter whether
the aggression is inflicted on the self or on another.
Work like Dr. Phillips’s helps us appreciate the awesome influence
of the behavior of similar others. Once the enormity of that force is re-
cognized, it becomes possible to understand perhaps the most spectac-
ular act of compliance of our time—the mass suicide at Jonestown,
Guyana. Certain crucial features of that event deserve review.
The People’s Temple was a cultlike organization that began in San
Francisco and drew its recruits from the poor of that city. In 1977, the
Reverend Jim Jones—who was the group’s undisputed political, social,
and spiritual leader—moved the bulk of the membership with him to
a jungle settlement in Guyana, South America. There, the People’s
Temple existed in relative obscurity until November 18, 1978, when
four men of a fact-finding party led by Congressman Leo J. Ryan were
murdered as they tried to leave Jonestown by plane. Convinced that
he would be arrested and implicated in the killings and that the demise
of the People’s Temple would result, Jones sought to control the end
of the Temple in his own way. He gathered the entire community
around him and issued a call for each person’s death in a unified act of
self-destruction.
The first response was that of a young woman who calmly ap-
proached the now famous vat of strawberry-flavored poison, admin-
istered one dose to her baby, one to herself, and then sat down in a
field, where she and her child died in convulsions within four minutes.
Others followed steadily in turn. Although a handful of Jonestowners
escaped rather than comply and a few others are reported to have res-
isted, the survivors claim that the great majority of the 910 people who
died did so in an orderly, willful fashion.
News of the event shocked us. The broadcast media and the papers
provided a barrage of reports, updates, and analyses. For days, our
conversations were full of the topic: “How many have they found dead
now?” “A guy who escaped says they were drinking the poison like
they were hypnotized or something.” “What were they doing down in
South America, anyway?” “It’s so hard to believe. What caused it?”
Yes, “What caused it?”—the critical question. How are we to account
114 / Influence