Articles

Bringing Anomie Back In: Exceptional Events and Excess Suicide

Hoffman, Mark Anthony; Bearman, Peter Shawn

In this article we show that imitation is not the mechanism behind the observed increase in suicides subsequent to highly publicized celebrity suicides. Instead, we show that most celebrity suicides are exceptional events and because of that have similar effects on the daily suicide rate as other exciting events. This finding suggests that Durkheim was right in rejecting the Tardean hypothesis that imitation is an operative mechanism and provides substantial support for the competing hypothesis that disruptive and/or exciting events (whether favorable or unfavorable) induce anomie and with it suicide.

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Title
Sociological Science
DOI
https://doi.org/10.15195/v2.a10

More About This Work

Academic Units
Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics
Sociology
Published Here
April 24, 2019