Premium
Mass Killings in the United States from 2006 to 2013: Social Contagion or Random Clusters?
Author(s) -
Lankford Adam,
Tomek Sara
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
suicide and life‐threatening behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.544
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1943-278X
pISSN - 0363-0234
DOI - 10.1111/sltb.12366
Subject(s) - copycat , criminology , speculation , term (time) , political science , psychology , economics , physics , quantum mechanics , cognitive science , macroeconomics
In line with previous research on suicide and social contagion, there has been widespread speculation that mass killings—which often involve suicidal offenders—are socially contagious for up to 14 days. This study tested these claims by making comparisons (i) between observed chronological clusters of mass killings in the United States from 2006 to 2013 and clusters in 500 simulations containing 116,000 randomly generated dates, and then (ii) between observed mass killings receiving varying levels of public attention. No evidence of short‐term contagion was found, although longer term copycat effects may exist. Further scholarly and policy implications are discussed.