1 Reconsidering Durkheim's Assessment of Tarde: Toward A

Reconsidering Durkheim’s Assessment of Tarde: Toward a Theory of “Imitation” and the Spread of Suicide Seth Abrutyn Anna S. Mueller University of Memphis Published in Sociological Forum (2014) Cite: Abrutyn, Seth, and Anna S. Mueller. 2014. "Reconsidering Durkheim’s Assessment of Tarde: Formalizing a Tardian Theory of Imitation, Contagion, and Suicide Suggestion." Sociological Forum 29(3):698-719. Abstract: Emile Durkheim summarily rejected Gabriel Tarde’s imitation thesis, arguing that sociology need only concern itself with social suicide rates. Over a century later, a burgeoning body of suicide research has challenged Durkheim’s claim to a general theory of suicide as four decades worth of evidence has firmly established that (1) there is a positive association between the publicization of celebrity suicides and a spike in the aggregate suicide rate, (2) some social environments are conducive to epidemic-like outbreaks of suicides, and (3) suicidal ideas or behavior spreads to some individuals exposed to a personal role model’s suicidal behavior—e.g., a friend or family member. Revisiting Tarde, the paper examines why Tarde’s theory deserves renewed attention, elucidates what he meant by imitation, and then formalizes his “laws” into testable theses, while suggesting future research questions that would advance the study of suicide, as well as other pathologies. Each “law” is elaborated by considering advances in contemporary social psychology as well as in light of its ability to supplement Durkheim’s theory in explaining the “outlier” cases. Keywords: Gabriel Tarde; Sociological Theory; Suicide Suggestion; Contagion; Emile Durkheim 1 INTRODUCTION In Durkheim’s Suicide, he readily dismissed Gabriel Tarde’s (1903) so-called imitation thesis: Because “imitation is a purely psychological phenomenon” it cannot be a social fact in that a “man may imitate another with no link of either one with the other or with a common group” (Durkheim 1897 [1951]:123). Less known is the fact that Durkheim later admits that the “idea of suicide may undoubtedly be communicated by contagion…[and that] no other phenomenon is more readily contagious” (ibid. 131-2, emphasis added). Furthmore, the “moral epidemic,” in his terminology, and not the actual suicide that triggers the outbreak “is a social fact, produced by social causes” (ibid. 132, emphasis added)—e.g., “the influence of the common environment” produces a collective suicidal conscience taking hold of a proportion of the individual consciences and “furnishes the occasion which causes the [suicidal] impulse to break out” (ibid. 140-1). Nevertheless, for various reasons spanning his own biases, motives, and goals, Durkheim had a strict conception of sociology that precludes the social psychology Tarde brandishes, and thus he proceeded to argue that only social suicide rates are sociologically relevant. Was Durkheim’s assessment fair? The paper below contends that not only were Durkheim’s conclusions not fair, there is a growing body of evidence that behavior (Haynie 2001; Christakis and Fowler 2007, 2008), attitudes (Bartholomew and Goode 2000; Norton et al. 2003), and, especially, emotions (Hatfield, Cacioppo, and Rapson 1994; Turner 2000; Collins 2004) do spread from person to person. Suicide epidemics, for instance, have increasingly been reported more systematically (see, for reviews, Gould, Wallenstein, and Kleinman 1990; Gould 2001; Romer, Jamieson, and Jamieson 2006); though, admittedly, more research is required. Additionally, a firmly established positive association between the media 2 exposure of a celebrity’s suicide and temporary spikes in the suicide rate of the population, or subpopulation, exposed to the suicide has been empirically verified repeatedly (Pirkis and Blood 2001; Stack 2005, 2009). And, while rates generally spike, on average, 2.51%, high-status suicides like Marilyn Monroe produced 13% spikes in the U.S. rate (Stack 1987), while a recent spate of celebrity hangings in South Korea led to a 66% spike in suicides by hanging (Fu and Chan 2013). Equally important has been a burgeoning body of research that appears to validate Tarde’s imitation thesis: an apparent link between the suicidal behavior of a personal role model—e.g., a parent or friend—and that of the children’s (Niederkrotenthaler et al. 2012) and adolescent’s suicidal behavior (Tishler 1981; Farberow et al. 1987; Bearman and Moody 2004; Liu 2006; Thompson and Light 2011) has been convincingly found. Commonly called suicide suggestion (Phillips 1974), the affect a personal role model has on persons exposed to their behavior holds even when controlling for Durkheimian protective mechanisms (Bjarnason 1994; Thorlindsson and Bjarnason 1998). Suicidologists have come to conclude, despite Durkheim’s theory being accepted and taught as “truth” in many departments, that reconsidering other theoretical advances is long overdue if a robust sociological theory of suicide is to be crafted (for a review, see Wray, Colen, and Pescosolido 2011; also, Pescosolido 1990; Bearman 1991). While this larger goal of building a general theory is beyond the scope of this paper, we turn instead to Tarde’s (1903) Laws of Imitation to see if (1) there is anything relevant to modern sociology in Tarde’s thoughts beyond its application to crowds and mass communication (van Ginneken 1992) and, if so, (2) whether these useful theoretical insights can be modified via advances in contemporary social psychology such that these 3 cases of suicide suggestion can be better explained without necessarily abandoning Durkheim. In part, the decision to revisit Tarde rests on Phillips’ (1974) landmark study that first identified the affect a celebrity’s suicide had on the exposed audience’s suicide rate; evoking Tarde, Phillips called this process suicide suggestion instead of imitation. Tarde may have called it imitation and Durkheim may have taken Tarde’s use of the term literally, but he did not mean imitation in the purest sense—e.g., aping or mimicry (cf. Sorokin 1957; Katz 1999). Rather, Tarde was one of the first social psychologists to explore the myriad ways in which behavior and attitudes could spread from one person or group to the next; he had the misfortune of choosing the term “imitation” to apply to the diverse set of processes he identified. Phillips liked picked up on the fact that Tarde did use the term imitation and suggestion synonymously (see Tarde 1903:43, 76, 204). A second reason comes from the confusion surrounding suggestion: to my knowledge, no one has bothered to precisely conceptualize what suggestion. In some cases, suggestion has been used to refer to copycat suicides in which it appears as if the person did actually imitate the role model (Niederkrotenthaler et al. 2009; Stack 2009); other scholars have used the term ambiguously, sometimes seeing suggestion as a “trigger” that activates predispositions and accelerates the decision to commit suicide (Phillips 1974), while sometimes using it to describe the suicide process by which people “learn” to commit suicide, presumably via some type of observable rewards (Thorlindsson and Bjarnason 1998). Thus, it makes sense to revisit Tarde’s “laws” in order to formalize them by clearly restating them, and then elaborating and extending them through contemporary 4 social psychological insights.1 Moreover, synthesizing Tarde and modern social psychology may deepen our understanding of the micro-level mechanisms that motivate people to commit suicide2, as current research often relies on ambiguous mechanisms like “vicarious rewards” found in recent iterations of Bandura’s Social Learning Theory (Akers and Jensen 2006) to explain the spread of suicide across networks or social relationships (e.g., Baller and Richardson 2009). Thus, the ultimate goal is not to eliminate Durkheim as some critics have suggested (Nolan, Triplett, and McDonough 2010), but rather to acknowledge the fact that social psychology must be considered a part of the study of suicide. Moreover, students of Durkheim will not find anything contradictory in the analysis below as the “mature” Durkheim on religion had already implicitly adopted social psychology and, ironically, some of Tarde’s own thinking (see Marks 1974). In sum, while the immediate goal is to rehabilitate, or perhaps more aptly, reformulate Tarde for a contemporary audience, the bigger goal is to construct a more cogent sociological explanation for 1 It should be noted that I am not intending to add to the already overtaxed sociological canon (Abrutyn 2013c), as the analysis below will clearly show that Tarde has some very interesting things to say, was perhaps the first true social psychologist in sociology, and many of his ideas have clear affinities with modern sociological thinking, yet his ambiguity, imprecision, and narrowness does not necessarily warrant placement in the classical canon. Rather, the intention is to inject Tarde’s ideas into Durkheim’s own apprehensive, yet potentially fruitful framework, while also updating both of them with more precise, empirical validated theoretical principles. To do so, of course, will require a clear elucidation of Tarde’s work and the careful isolation of the most valuable insights and propositions to help understand why, when, and how suicides might spread. In essence, then, we are not looking to reject or put the final sword in Durkheim’s theory, but rather to elaborate a better, synthetic theory of suicide, while also introducing Tarde to a generation of sociologists entirely unaware that he even existed. 2 Though suicide is the specific pathology this paper focuses on, for obvious reasons, Tarde’s theory was broader and more general than this. Much of what will be teased out of his work is meant to be generalized to other types of behavior including pro-social, delinquent, etc. 5 suicide suggestion and, more generally, contribute to the project of a general sociological theory of suicide. The discussion begins by asking and answering the question: why Tarde matters in the first place? GABRIEL TARDE REVISITED Why Tarde Matters Tarde holds either one of two places in contemporary sociology.

Load more