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The Werther Effect refers to the human phenomenon that, for better or worse, behaviors pass between humans by ideas (language and behaviors), in addition to genetics. Also referred to as thought or idea contagion, the Werther Effect shows that human behaviors and ideas are "contagious". In particular, suicide is widely accepted as a contagious behavior; but also multiple personality disorder, pathological homesickness, apotemnophilia, and even Ursuline convents in seventeenth-century France have been postulated to arise from contagion.
Belief in the media contagion of suicide is so pervasive that voluntary censorship is widely observed in reporting on suicide. There is evidence that many behaviors other than suicide are similarly "contagious". Violence against others is well-studied in its relation to media contagion. The harm of violence, especially homicidal violence like murder and murder-suicide, is much greater than that of suicide.
The Werther Effect is so named after the Goethe novel "The Sorrows of Young Werther".
See also
References
- http://www.newsfinder.org/site/more/thought_contagion_how_belief_spreads_through_society/
- http://tafkac.org/books/thought_contagion.html
- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/16/AR2007121601472.html
- http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/2001/vol5/marsden_p.html
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