Threatened suicide and baiting crowd formation: a replication and extension of Mann (1981)

ABSTRACT

Using the lens of Deindividuation Theory, Leon Mann explored the formation of baiting crowds in a small sample of public suicides/suicide attempts. Instead of attempting to prevent the suicide, baiting crowds encourage the victim to jump. Our aim was to replicate Mann's study with a larger more diverse sample of suicide attempts and a broadened theoretical lens (Frustration-Aggression). Using ProQuest, we identified 152 public suicide attempts reported in English language newspapers and failed to replicate Mann’s findings. Rather, baiting crowd formation was associated with variables that increase crowd frustration (e.g., duration of the event, blocked traffic, cordoned off pedestrian walkways). Finally, we failed to find an association between the presence of a baiting crowd and the suicidal individual ultimately jumping.

KEYWORDS:

• Suicide baiting
• crowd behavior
• Deindividuation
• Frustration-Aggression

Acknowlegments

We would like to thank Andy Bui and Adam Rash for their assistance in locating public suicide cases.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. When well known landmarks were involved (e.g., Golden Gate Bridge), effort was made to ascertain the height variable when it was missing from the newspaper article’s coverage of the event. This is the only variable of those studied for which values other than those explicitly stated in the newspaper article were used.

2. When words were used, Passersby were coded as 15, dozens were coded as 24, small crowds were coded as 50, and large crowds were coded as 300.