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It is obvious that people learn and that they apply what they've learned to new and varied situations. This happens so frequently, and in many cases so effortlessly, that it is easy to take the process for granted. It is not surprising, then, that so many public health interventions involve an educational component, the assumption being that once people are informed about a risk and given corrective or preventive direction, they will act appropriately. Experience has demonstrated, however, that although education may be a necessary component of behavioral change, it is not sufficient to produce it. Despite the investment of millions of dollars and decades of effort in designing information campaigns to reduce obesity, promote safe sex, eliminate cigarette smoking, and encourage annual physical examinations, a significant segment of the population continues to engage in unsafe, risky behavior. It is not until we deliberately attempt to influence specific behaviors in defined populations and contexts that we become 223

Published and unpublished reports of mass psychogenic illness, defined as the collective occurrence of physical symptoms and related beliefs among two or more persons in the absence of an identifiable pathogen, are reviewed with particular emphasis on organizational occurrences. A number of factors (e.g. boredom, sex‐role identification, interpersonal conflict, physical stress) are identified as potential precipitating conditions, and the contagion of symptoms is discussed in terms of the convergence–contagion dichotomy in collective behaviour suggested by Milgram & Toch (1969).

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