Background: Although the it has been hypothesized that an imitation process can explain the well documented "Werther Effect", there has been no experimental test of this hypothesis.In our study, we adopt an experimental approach to study the validity of two important tenets of the imitation hypothesis.First, according to social learning theory it is hypothesized that socio-demographic similarities between suicide model portrayed in media and audience members enhance identification with the model, memory of the behaviours displayed by the model, and emotional arousal evoked by the suicide portrayal.Second, several different lines of research suggest that the facilitative influence of portrayals of suicidal acts in media of suicidal behaviours by audience members is associated with their prior psychological vulnerabilities.Methods: In this study, 101 young adults completed self-reported measures of their prior exposure to suicide by others, their own suicidal behaviour history, as well as their emotional reactivity, thought suppression, and dissociation tendencies.In a separate session, 51 participants were exposed to six brief excerpts of fictional films depicting a suicide attempt by a male or female protagonist.After each excerpt, participants completed a memory test, reported on their emotional arousal, and identification with the suicidal protagonist.Results: Contrary to expectations, there were no significant interactive effects between the suicidal protagonists and the participants gender on memory, arousal and identification.However, across all excerpts women tended to identify more strongly than men to the suicidal protagonist.The study also found that thought suppression tendency was a significant predictor of both the extent of memory of the excerpts and the intensity of emotional arousal provoked by the excerpts.Conclusion: The simple hypothesis that vulnerable people display stronger cognitive and emotional responses when the media victim is similar to them is not supported by our findings.Our findings also suggest that there may be important male-female differences in the psychological and emotional experiences of media portrayals of suicides and that thought suppression is an important predictor of the nature of experiences of suicide in the media.