Robert Cialdini’s classic book Influence: Science and Practice summarizes very interesting studies by University of California sociologist David Phillips that demonstrate how suggestible people are.

Philips examined U.S. suicide statistics from 1947 to 1968 and found that within two months of a front-page newspaper story about a suicide, an average of 58 more people killed themselves, primarily in that part of the country where the reported suicide had occurred.

After actress Marilyn Monroe was found dead from an overdose of sleeping pills in 1962, there was a 12% increase in suicides by overdoses in the following months.

Philips also found that when news stories reported the suicide of a young person, there was a subsequent increase in fatal car accidents (which may have been intentional) involving young people. When the suicide of an older person was reported, more older drivers died in car crashes.

These apparent “copycat” suicides demonstrate the power of suggestion, which is also apparent in the history of sightings of UFOs – unidentified flying objects.

A recent article on the history of UFO sightings notes that private pilot Kenneth Arnold was the first person to report a UFO sighting, in 1947. Arnold said that he saw nine airborne objects that flew “like a saucer if you skip it across the water.” Arnold never said the UFOs looked like saucers; he said they looked like boomerangs. But “flying saucers” is what stuck in people’s minds and soon there were many sighting of “saucers” around the world.

One wonders if the power of suggestion was at work in these “flying saucer” sightings. If news of suicides can cause people to kill themselves, news about “flying saucers” may be enough to encourage people to see them.