NCBI ROFL: National anthems and suicide rates. | Discoblog

NCBI ROFL: National anthems and suicide rates. | Discoblog: "

“In a sample of 18 European nations, suicide rates were positively associated with the proportion of low notes in the national anthems and, albeit less strongly, with students’ ratings of how gloomy and how sad the anthems sounded, supporting a hypothesis proposed by Rihmer.”



Bonus full text:

“For most of the 20th Century, Hungary had the highest suicide rate in the world and, also, among immigrants to the United States, Hungarians had the highest suicide rates (Lester, 1994). Hungary is also known for the “suicide song”—“Gloomy Sunday”—which was written by a Hungarian (Rezso Seress) in 1933 and which was banned from radio stations since it seemed to induce people to commit suicide (Stack, Krysinska, & Lester, 2007–2008). Rihmer (1997) noted that the Hungarian national anthem was very sad and, in an informal study of suicide rates in European nations, declared that higher national suicide rates were associated with more low notes in national anthems.

The present study explored this idea further. The national anthems of 18 European nations were played for 30 American students enrolled in a course for statistical methods (6 men, 24 women; M age = 22.5 yr., ...

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