Cialdini raamat
ately after the story appeared in print. Once again the predictions were strikingly
accurate: When the newspaper detailed the suicide of a young person, it was young
drivers who then piled their cars into trees, poles, and embankments with fatal re-
sults; but when the news story concerned an older person's suicide, older drivers
died in such crashes (Phillips, 1980).
This last statistic is the clincher for me. I am left wholly convinced and, simul-
taneously, wholly amazed by it. Evidently, the principle of social proof is so wide-
ranging and powerful that its domain extends to the fundamental decision for life
or death. Phillips' findings illustrate a distressing tendency for suicide publicity to
motivate certain people who are similar to the victim to kill themselves-because
they now find the idea of suicide more legitimate. Truly frightening are the data in-
annaabi.ee 
