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What is suicide? Will suicidologists ever agree?
1Psychology Program, The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, Jimmie Leeds Road, Pomona, NJ 08240-0195, USA. lesterd@stockton.edu
Psychological Reports
|April 21, 2010
Summary
Both students and experts define suicide similarly, using a prototype approach. Experts were less likely to classify a dog
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Cognitive Science
- Behavioral Science
Background:
- Understanding how individuals categorize complex behaviors like suicide is crucial.
- Previous research suggests object categorization models can inform human judgment.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether laypeople (students) and experts categorize suicide using similar cognitive approaches.
- To compare prototype-based versus feature-comparison models in defining suicide.
Main Methods:
- 51 students and 20 experts evaluated 20 distinct behaviors for their potential classification as suicide.
- Cognitive models of object categorization were applied to analyze the judgment data.
Main Results:
- Both students and experts demonstrated a high degree of agreement in their judgments of suicide.
- Experts showed a slight tendency to differentiate animal behavior from human suicide, specifically regarding a dog refusing food.
- Analysis indicated a predominant use of a prototypical approach over a feature-comparison approach in defining suicide by both groups.
Conclusions:
- Laypeople and experts employ a shared prototypical strategy when defining suicide.
- This suggests that the conceptualization of suicide relies on recognizing typical examples rather than a checklist of features.
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