Citation

McDonald DH, Range LM. J. Appl. Soc. Psychol. 1990; 20(13): 1093-1102.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1990, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1559-1816.1990.tb00392.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

To see if high-school students who read that a distressed adolescent knew about suicide thought that suicidal contagion would occur, 66 consenting high-school students read a written account of John, a high-schooler with multiple problems including knowing someone who had died (either by suicide or viral illness). They then anonymously completed the UCLA Loneliness scale and a questionnaire about what John (or they in the same situation) might do. When John knew of a sympathetic response to a viral illness death, or an unsympathetic response to suicide, he was rated as relatively more likely to make new friends and less likely to want to die. These high school students saw themselves as immune to suicidal contagion from a written report, but thought that others might be vulnerable if people were sympathetic.