Mass Hysteria, Mass Panics, Contagious Mental Conditions

03 Oct 1994 12:02

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See also:
• Actually, "Dr. Internet" Is the Name of the Monster's Creator
• Memes, and Related Ideas about the Evolution of Culture
• Possession
• The "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s and Recovered Memories
• Social Contagion

Recommended, big picture:
• Elaine Showalter, Hystories: Hysterial Epidemics and Modern Media

Recommended, close-ups:
• Azeen Ghoryashi, "How Teens Recovered From the 'TikTok Tics'", New York Times 13 February 2023
• Malcolm Gladwell, "Is the Belgian Coca-Cola hysteria the real thing?" The New Yorker 12 July 1999 [Online]
• Davide Martino, Tammy Hedderly, Tara Murphy, Kirsten R. Müller-Vahl, Russell C. Dale, Donald L. Gilbert, Renata Rizzo, Andreas Hartmann, Peter Nagy, Mathieu Anheim, Tamsin Owen, Osman Malik, Morvwen Duncan, Isobel Heyman, Holan Liang, Andrew McWilliams, Shauna O'Dwyer, Carolin Fremer, Natalia Szejko, Velda X. Han, Kasia Kozlowska, Tamara M. Pringsheim, "The spectrum of functional tic-like behaviours: Data from an international registry", European Journal of Neurology 30 (2023): 334--343 [See also the Ghorayshi news story]
• Kirsten R. Müller-Vahl, Anna Pisarenko, Ewgeni Jakubovski and Carolin Fremer, "Stop that! It's not Tourette's but a new type of mass sociogenic illness", Brain 145 (2022): 476--480

To read:
• Robert E. Bartholomew, Little Green Men, Meowing Nuns and Head-Hunting Panics: A Study of Mass Psychogenic Illness and Social Delusion
• Robert E. Bartholomew and Hilary Evans, Panic Attacks: Media Manipulation and Mass Delusion
• Hadley Cantril, Invasion from Mars
• Hilary Evans and Robert E. Bartholomew, Outbreak! The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior
• Elaine Hatfield, John T. Cacioppo and Richard L. Rapson, Emotional Contagion: Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction<
• Philip A. Kuhn, Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768
• Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster [As a counter-point on the "panic" front]