Panic, affiliation or social identity? Interviewing survivors of mass emergencies and disasters

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Panic, affiliation or social identity?Interviewin
g survivors of mass emergencies and disasters

• John Drury
• University of Sussex, UK

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Popular images of mass emergencies and evacuations

• Crowd panic
• In the face of threat
• 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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Empirical problems for panic

• Panic is actually rare (Brown, 1965 Johnson,
  1988 Keating, 1982 Quarantelli, 1960).
• Lack of crowd panic (examples)
• atomic bombing of Japan during World War II
  (Janis, 1951)
• Kings Cross Underground fire of 1987 (Donald
  Canter, 1990)
• 9/11 World Trade Center disaster (Blake, Galea,
  Westeng, Dixon, 2004)

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Explaining helping in emergencies

• Normative approaches
• Behaviour is guided by norms
• People adhere to everyday social roles
• e.g. Beverly Hills Supper Club fire, 1977
  (Johnson, 1988)

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Explaining helping in emergencies

• Affiliation
• Affiliation (existing social ties) determine how
  people behave, whether they survive
• in threat, we are motivated to seek the familiar
  rather than simply exit (hence family groups will
  stay together rather than exit individually)
• the presence of familiar others (affiliates) has
  a calming effect, working against a fight or
  flight reaction
• e.g. fire at the Summerland leisure complex in
  1973 (Sime, 1983)

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Norms and affiliation Theoretical developments
and empirical limitations

• ?
• The evacuating/emergency/disaster crowd as a
  social (not individualised/instinctual)
  phenomenon
• Continuity with everyday psychological processes
• ?
• Risk to self as normative?
• Crowds of strangers dont panic
• Helping strangers not just affiliates

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Problems for normative and affiliation models

• Theoretical
• For normative approaches, a norm of helping
  strangers would require an extended period of
  milling (face-to-face interaction)
• For affiliation, sociality is limited to the
  small group affiliation is with those one
  already has attachments
• Meta-theoretical
• Disaster research tradition emerged from
  small group tradition emphasis on
  interpersonal interaction
• Need a model of mass emergent sociality

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• Shared fate in relation to threat/emergency
  creates sense of we-ness (Clarke, 2002)

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A self-categorization-based account of aspects of
mass emergency behaviour

• How does a physical crowd (or aggregate) become
  a psychological crowd?
• Shared fate (Campbell) as one criteria for
  self-categorization
• Crowd conflict studies (Reicher et al.) action
  by an outgroup which is perceived to be
  indiscriminate leads crowd members to see
  themselves as one
• Hence in a disaster or mass emergency, the
  external threat posed to the crowd as a whole
  serves to make people see themselves more as one

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A self-categorization-based account of aspects of
mass emergency behaviour

• A personal self and as many social selves as we
  have memberships of social groups or categories.
• Depersonalization ? seeing other ingroup
  members as part of self.
• ? caring about these others and acting in their
  interests, even where these others are not
  personally known or even liked
• Indirect support SCT principles have been
  applied to explain
• group cohesion/attraction within and between
  groups (e.g., Hogg, 1987)
• crowd behaviour (Reicher, 2001)
• commitment to collective action (e.g., Veenstra
  Haslam, 2000
• helping within and between groups (e.g., Levine,
  Prosser, Evans, Reicher, 2005).

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A note on methods

• The panic tradition
• Anecdotal evidence
• military studies
• Experimental social psychology
• Mintz rationality
• Kelley et al. threat
• Issues balancing engagement with ethics
• Disaster research
• sociological background
• emphasis on detailed field work

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A note on methods

• The need to combine methods
• The need for interview data to be added to
  experimental and secondary data
• To probe and interrogate peoples
  accounts/experiences
• To examine the role of identity

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Overview of interview studies Research questions

• 1. To examine whether or not there was mass
  panic personally selfishness vs mutual aid
• Rationale Panic has been discredited
  academically but still influential in applied
  settings
• 2. If so, to examine whether shared identity
  (versus norms and affiliation) explains any of
  the evidence of helping
• 3. If so, to examine how shared identity arose.

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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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Interview study 1 (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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• Questions on
• Perceptions of of danger
• feelings towards others around them
• own and others behaviours (helpful and/or
  personally selfish).
• Analysed qualitatively and quantitatively

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Interview study 1 hypotheses

• H1 In the face of danger there is a perception
  of shared fate, and hence a common identity
  emerges
• H2 The common identity means that those in
  danger help others, including strangers
• H3 if there is no common identity, there will
  not be this level of help.

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H1 Danger ? shared fate ? common identity

• Most who described a sense of threat (13 vs 1)
  also referred to a sense of unity (12 vs 7) in
  relation to this threat
• TC Oh yeah of course I I get on the train every
  day. So a train journey you would normally take
  is, you know, I myself get on the train at ten to
  seven in the mornings, sit down, open the paper
  and there might be one or two people talking out
  of a completely packed carriage.
• Int Yeah.
• TC So, you know, that that sort of thing and the
  perception of of being involved in that, and
  everyones involved and lets do, lets group
  together
• (Train accident)

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H2 Common identity ? indiscriminate help

• Most who described a sense of unity (12 vs 7)
  also described giving help to others (12 vs 6)
  and, even more so, cited examples of others
  helping others (18 vs 3) sometimes at a clear
  cost or risk to the personal self
• the behaviour of many people in that crowd and
  simply trying to help their fellow supporters was
  heroic in some cases. So I dont think in my view
  there was any question that there was an organic
  sense of unity of crowd behaviour. It was
  clearly the case, you know.. it was clearly the
  case that people were trying to get people who
  were seriously injured out of that crowd, it was
  seriously a case of trying to get people to
  hospital, get them to safety .. I just wish Id
  been able to.. to prevail on a few more people
  not to.. put themselves in danger.
• (Hillsborough 3)

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H3 No common identity ? less help

• At the Fatboy Slim beach party, while some felt
  in danger (from the tide and the crush) and
  described a sense of unity, for another
  interviewee there was no perceived danger, and
  others present were perceived as not part of a
  common group and indeed were seen to behave as
  competing individuals

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H3 No common identity ? less help

• It wasnt a group thing, it was a very
  individual lots of individuals together... I felt
  like I was with my .. five or six friends and
  that was it.. and it was like the others were the
  enemy It wasnt like oh I was at Fat Boy
  Slim, I experienced all the the bad times with my
  fellow clubbers, it wasnt like that, it was the
  opposite.
• the fact that people were trying to barge past
  me, I thought that was really selfish. No-one was
  letting me go first. There was no courteousness
  at all
• (Fatboy Slim 3)

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Interview study 1 Conclusions

• N of Ps small, but rich accounts (of n of
  incidents, behaviours, perceptions, feelings)
• No evidence for widespread panic
• Some evidence for affiliation, roles and norms
• BUT evidence of common unity and its correlation
  with indiscriminate and self-sacrificial helping
  makes prima facie case for an SCT-based account
  of mass evacuation behaviour
• Disaster turns an aggregate into a psychological
  crowd

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Interview study 2 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.
• Triages were set up close to the explosions.
• Some though not all those injured ferried to
  various London hospitals others made their own
  way to work or home
• London was massively disrupted and didnt return
  to near-normal till the evening.

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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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Was there panic?

• There was talk of panic
• 57 eye-witness accounts used the term panic.
• 20 eye-witness accounts explicitly denied that
  there was panic
• 37 accounts referred to calm amongst those
  affected by the bombs
• 58 to an orderly evacuation.

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How much mutual help was there?

• 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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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.
• Three others described helping behaviour by
  professionals they witnessed as brave or heroic
  because they saw it as involving a clear risk of
  death

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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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Were people with strangers or affiliates?

• 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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How much personally selfish behaviour was evident?

• Selfish, 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 was survivor
  guilt

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Was there a sense of unity (shared identity)?

• Only 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

• Talk of panic but no mass panic behaviour
• Mutual aid was common, selfish behaviour was rare
• Most people were with strangers not affiliates
• Most people felt in danger but continued to help
• Good evidence of unity in the primary data
• Hence relationship between external threat,
  shared identity, help.

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Unity and helping as everyday norms?

• Is the unity and helping described different from
  social relations normally on the trains and just
  before the bomb?

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• CC can you say how much unity there was on a
  scale of 1-10
• LB1 Id say it was very high Id say it was 7 or
  8 out of 10
• CC ok and comparing to before the blast happened
  what do you think the unity was like before
• LB1 Id say very low- 3 out of 10 I mean you
  dont really think about unity in a normal train
  journey, it just doesnt happen you just want to
  get from A to B, get a seat maybe

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• CC You mentioned that there appeared to be
  quite a strong sense of unity after the blast.
  Can you remember if there was any unity before
  the blast happened amongst people on the train?
• LB7 um maybe a tiny bit, you know everyones
  all in the same situation, on a really crowded
  uncomfortable train on their way to work. But at
  the same time people are kind of annoyed with
  each other just from being in that situation, you
  know. But there was probably a little bit of
  unity but not very much.
• CC Ok and can you remember when this strong
  sense of unity first emerged, when you first
  thought that?
• LB7 I guess probably straight away and then it
  probably grew a bit but as soon as it happened
  and people were screaming there was another guy
  saying calm down and people were talking to
  each other straight away and obviously something
  huge had happened and we just kind of instantly
  felt quite together really

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Some conclusions

• Affiliation and everyday norms may explain some
  aspects of mass emergency behaviour but not all
• There is some evidence that shared identity
  explains some of the helping behaviour (and
  reduces selfish behaviour) in emergencies
• The evidence that shared identity develops with
  the sense of shared threat is in line with the
  SCT account
• In contrast to panic, an emergency brings
  people together not drives them apart

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Theoretical implications

• Previous SCT research has shown the role of
  shared identity in helping (Levine et al.)
• This research adds that such group-based helping
  can also take place in highly stressful,
  dangerous situations
• This research suggests a psychological basis for
  the concept of resilience (collective
  self-help, resources and recovery in disasters)

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Practical implications

• If panic is wrong and crowd behaviour is social
  and meaningful
• Design and emergency procedures More emphasis on
  communicating with the crowd and less on the
  crowd as a physical entity (exit widths)
• 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.