Celebrities and Suicide: A Taxonomy and Analysis, 1948-1983

Abstract

Research on the impact of suicide stories in the media on imitative suicides has been marked by poor theory and undifferentiated indexes. This study focuses on celebrity suicides. It uses a taxonomy of celebrities based on Tarde's laws of imitation and Pareto's concept of elite. Propositions are drawn from differential identification theory, using mass cultural values and beliefs as points of identification. The imitation effect holds only for American entertainers and political celebrities, not for artists, villains, and the economic elite. The amount of publicity given to suicides was positively related to the monthly incidence of suicide, but problems common to the celebrities and the suicidal population (divorce, physical illness, and poor mental health) were not. An interactive model in which the impact of a suicide story is mediated by the suicidogenic mood of the media audience did not improve on the simple additive model. Age, gender, and race-specific suicide rates tended to support identification theory.