The role of social identity in emergencies and mass evacuations

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The role of social identity in emergencies and
mass evacuations

• John Drury
• University of Sussex, UK

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Acknowledgements

• Chris Cocking (University of Sussex, UK)
• Steve Reicher (University of St Andrews, UK)
• The research was made possible by a grant from
  the Economic and Social Research Council Ref. no
  RES-000-23-0446.

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Popular images of mass emergency and evacuation
behaviour

• 1. Crowd panic
• Instinct overwhelms socialization
• Emotion outweighs reasoning
• Rumours and sentiments spread uncritically
• Reactions disproportionate to danger
• Competitive and personally selfish behaviours
  predominate
• Ineffective escape

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Popular images of mass emergency and evacuation
behaviour

• 2. Blitz spirit
• Adversity brings people together
• More solidarity when people feel under attack
• People pull together
• Resilience, coping, strength
• Sense of community

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Explaining social behaviour and helping in mass
emergencies

• Affiliation
• existing social ties) determine how people
  behave, whether they survive
• e.g. fire at the Summerland leisure complex in
  1973 (Sime, 1983)
• BUT how, when and why do people co-operate with
  strangers sometimes even risking their lives to
  help them? (Blitz spirit)

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Research questions

• How do crowds behave when faced with danger such
  as natural disasters or terrorist attacks?
• Does mass panic occur?
• Do people just help their families and friends?
• Does a shared social identity (sense of unity,
  togetherness) enhance co-ordination and
  co-operation in disasters and emergencies?

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The research

• An archive, questionnaire and interview study of
  survivors experience of the London bombings of
  July 2005.
• A comparative interview study of a number of
  different emergency events
• Experimental simulations of emergency evacuations

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London bombings of 7/7/05

• Three bombs on the London Underground and one on
  a London bus
• 56 people killed (including the four bombers)
  over 700 injured
• Those in the bombed underground trains were left
  in the dark, with few announcements, and with no
  way of knowing whether they would be rescued,
  whether the rail lines were live and so on.
• There were fears by both those in the trains and
  the emergency services of further explosions.

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London bombs data-set

• 12 face-to-face interviews plus seven e-mail
  responses
• Secondary data
• (i) Contemporaneous interviews with survivors
  and witnesses, from 141 different articles in 10
  different national daily newspapers.
• (ii) 114 detailed personal accounts of survivors
  (web, London Assembly enquiry, books or
  retrospective newspaper features.
• .
• data from at least 145 people, most of whom
  (90) were actually caught up in the explosions

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Personally selfish and competitive behaviour was
rare

• Personal accounts only four cases of people's
  behaviour that could be described as personally
  selfish, and six cases where the speaker
  suggested that another victim behaved selfishly
  to them or to someone else.
• Seven people referred to their own behaviour as
  selfish BUT in most cases this seemed to be
  survivor guilt

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Mutual help was common

• In the personal accounts
• 42 people reported helping others
• 29 reported being helped by others
• 50 reported witnessing others affected by the
  explosions helping others

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• this Australian guy was handing his water to all
  of us to make sure we were all right I I was
  coughing quite heavily from smoke inhalation and
  so Id got a bit of a cold anyway which
  aggravated it and also I mean he was really
  helpful but when the initial blast happened I was
  sat next to an elderly lady a middle aged lady
  and I just said to her are you all right?
• (Edgware Road)

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• LB7 these guys helped me up on the platform and
  then this woman came and asked if I was alright
  and then held my hand as we walked up the
  platform together. And um got the lift up to the
  tube station and sat down for ages and ages and
  then this really nice woman came and sat with me
  and put her coat round me kind of looked after me
• Female, early 20s, Kings Cross (in carriage
  bombed)

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• People outside our carriage on the track were
  trying to save the people with very severe
  injuries - they were heroes.
• The driver of our train did his utmost to keep
  all passengers calm - he was a hero. If he knew
  what had happened he gave nothing away.
• (Kings Cross)

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Affiliation?

• Most of the people affected were amongst
  strangers
• nearly 60 people in the personal accounts
  reported being amongst people they didnt know
  (including 48 people who were actually on the
  trains or bus that exploded)
• only eight reported being with family or friends
  at the time of the explosion.

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Did people help despite feeling in danger
themselves?

• There was a widespread fear of danger or death
  through secondary explosions or the tunnel
  collapsing. Yet
• Nine of our 19 respondents gave examples of where
  they had helped other people despite their own
  fear of death.

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Was there a sense of shared identity?

• Occasional references to unity and shared fate in
  secondary data, e.g. Blitz spirit
• BUT no references to dis-unity either
• Interview data
• Nine out of twelve were explicit that there was a
  strong sense of unity in the crowd
• References to unity were not only typical but
  also spontaneous and elaborate/detailed

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• empathy
• unity
• together
• similarity, affinity
• part of a group
• you thought these people knew each other
• vague solidity
• warmness
• teamness
• everybody, didnt matter what colour or
  nationality

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London bombs Summary

• No mass panic behaviour
• Mutual aid was common, personally selfish
  behaviour was rare
• Most people felt in danger but continued to help
• Evidence of unity in the primary data
• Hence relationship between external threat,
  shared identity, helping behaviour

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Study 2 Multiple events

• Interviews with (21) survivors of (11) disasters
  (and perceived/potential disasters) e.g.
  Hillsborough (1989), sinking ships, Bradford City
  fire (1985), Fatboy Slim beach party (2002)

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H1. Greater common identity more helping

• Estimated strength of identity
• Measured number of helping incidents (which
  outnumbered selfish incidents anyway)
• Level of common identity predicted amount of
  helping incidents (given, received, observed)
  marginally significantly, ß 0.42, SE B 0.23,
  t(20) 1.99, p 0.06.

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• Int. How would you describe those who were in the
  evacuation with you? Is there any phrase or word
  you would use to describe them?
• J2 As as a whole group?
• Int Yeah
• J2 I guess Id say mutually supportive ..We
  were all strangers really we were certainly
  surrounded by strangers but . most of, I mean
  Id got my kids by me, but most people were split
  up from anybody they knew, and yet there was this
  sort of camaraderie like you hear about in the
  war times and this sort of thing .. there there
  was certainly a pulling together as apposed to a
  pulling apart.
• (Jupiter 2)

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H2. Perceived threat leads to common identity

• London bombs study suggested that unity emerged
  and developed within the event itself shared
  fate brings people together.
• regression of perceived threat to self on level
  of common identity was found to be a trend in the
  predicted direction (ß 0.46, SE B 0.28, t(14)
  1.86, p 0.09)

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• all of a sudden everyone was one in this situ-
  when when a disaster happens when a disaster
  happens, I dont know, say in the war some-
  somewhere got bombed it was sort of that old that
  old English spirit where you had to club together
  and help one another, you know, you had to sort
  of do what you had to do, sort of join up as a
  team, and a good example of that would be when
  some of the fans got the hoardings and put the
  bodies on them and took them over to the
  ambulances
• (Hillsborough 3)

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Issues remaining from field studies

• Shared identity measured after the event
• Ideally, to show that shared identity matters in
  helping in mass emergency behaviour,
  psychologists need to be able to manipulate it in
  the lab then measure the effects

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Study 3 Experimental simulation
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Simulation study - design

• Participants had task of escaping from fire in
  underground rail station
• In the computer simulation
• characters were sometimes in their way
• some characters were in need of help but
  helping would delay your exit
• Participants had to escape as quickly as possible

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Simulation study - results

• Participants were either cast as group members
  (social identity) or individuals (personal
  identity)
• In most cases, those cast as group members helped
  the characters in need more than did other
  participants, even if this meant delaying their
  exit
• In questionnaires they indicated they cared more
  about the other characters than did the personal
  identity participants

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Overall conclusions

• Helping behaviour is more common than panic in
  emergencies and disasters
• Shared identity explains some of the helping
  behaviour (and reduces selfish behaviour) in
  emergencies
• In contrast to panic, an emergency brings
  people together not drives them apart

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Practical implications

• If panic is wrong and crowd behaviour is social
  and meaningful
• More emphasis is needed on communicating with the
  crowd and less on the crowd as a physical entity
  (exit widths)
• If shared social identity is the basis of much
  helping
• Those in authority should encourage a sense of
  collective identity in the public
• If there is a potential for resilience among
  strangers
• The authorities and emergency services need to
  allow and cater for peoples willingness to help
  each other
• Survivors need for mutual support groups may be
  therapeutic and need to be researched
• The role of group-behaviour in emergencies needs
  to be included in existing computer-based models
  of crowd dynamics for increased psychological
  realism

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Take-home message

• The collective is a resource not an obstacle in
  mass emergencies
• Rather than being excluded from emergency defence
  and evacuation, the public should be allowed to
  be more centrally involved