Dr Drury conducts research into behaviour and response in mass emergencies

1. How do people behave in mass
emergencies?
Dr John Drury
University of Sussex
School of Psychology

2. A popular image of behaviour in emergencies:
‘Mass panic’?

3. As a repertoire, ‘mass panic’ includes the
following elements:
• Flight
• Fear
• Lack of coordination
• Emotional overreaction to threat
• ‘Contagion’ in crowds
• Rash, hasty behaviour
• False beliefs
• Selfishness
(grandmothers trampled etc.)
• Irrationality (unreasonable behaviour) especially in
crowds

4. Overview
1. Early evidence for ‘mass panic’
2. Problems with ‘mass panic’
3. Collective resilience in crowds
4. Implications for managing mass
emergencies

5. 1 Early evidence for ‘mass panic’
• Anecdotes of apparent mass irrationality e.g., ‘War of the
Worlds’ radio broadcast in 1938 was said to have led to
panic across the USA
• Military observations were the first scientific studies:
– Examples from military history, going back to 19th
century, of
troops ‘panicking’
– e.g., USA 92nd
infantry division in Italy, 1944-45; ‘disintegration of a
whole battalion’

6. Civilian studies (of fires) – the received wisdom:
‘Most deaths in night-club fires are due to
‘crowd panic’, not the fire itself’
A textbook case:
• Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire, 1942
(492 died)

7. Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire, 1942
(Chertkoff & Kushigian, 1999)
What really happened:
• Few knew the way out, not
even many of the staff.
• The emergency exit door was
locked so that many died from
fumes and then a ball of fire.
• The head bartender was one of
those helping lead remaining
survivors out.

8. Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire, 1942
• In the main dining room,
hundreds tried to get out
through the main revolving
doors.
• But the revolving door
jammed. Those trapped
inside burned to death.
‘Those outside could do
nothing to save them.’
(p. 41)

9. Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire, 1942
In the investigation
• The major causes of the loss of
life were said to be:
– the locked doors
– the unfamiliarity and inaccessibility
of normal exits
– the jamming of the revolving door.
• There weren’t any exit signs!
• Most people couldn’t do much to
help each other (since most didn’t
even know the exits).

10. Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire, 1942
Conclusions:
Out-and-out selfish behaviour at others’ expense
was in the minority.
• There is no implication that crowd irrationality or
over-reaction caused the deaths.
• The management were subsequently
prosecuted for manslaughter and neglect of
building laws.

11. 2. Problems with ‘mass panic’
Quarantelli (1960)
• Studies of disaster behaviour
• Questioned assumption of irrationality – how do we know the reason?
• ‘Flight’ is a more scientific account of the behaviour.
Fleeing, fear, screaming or other responses to perceived danger may
therefore be reasonable given the limited information - and limited
choices - available to people in the midst of an emergency

12. • If we judge a crowd behaviour as ‘irrational’ because of its
self-defeating outcome, this risks circularity.
• Intentional (meaningful) actions may have unintended
outcomes - especially in crowds!
• Sime (1990): ‘Mass panic’ is not a useful scientific concept
for referring to dysfunctional crowd reactions to
emergencies

13. Problems with ‘mass panic’
Case studies note a lack of ‘mass panic’:
• 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)

14. Empirically, theories of ‘panic’ typically
suggest that the following are generic in
emergencies:
• Loss of behavioural control
• Hence selfishness
• Disorderly responses

15. • BUT cooperation is relatively common within
and across crowds in emergencies
Hillsborough (Drury et al., 2009a)

16. • People often prefer to stay behind with
others rather than push them aside and flee
Fire at the Summerland leisure complex, 1973
(Sime, 1983)

17. • Normal rules for social conduct are often
maintained even at critical moments
The Beverly Hills Supper Club fire, 1977
(Johnson, 1988)

18. Reverse the perspective on the crowd:
• It is one or two individuals who might over-
react, not the crowd
• Others in the crowd act to calm them down.
Can crowds be sources of resilience in
emergencies?

19. 3 Collective resilience in crowds
The concept is recognized in some official guidance:
‘Communities of Circumstance’
• These communities are created when groups of people
are affected by the same incident, such as a train crash.
These groups of individuals are unlikely to have the same
interests or come from the same geographical area but
may form a community in the aftermath of an event.
Although this sense of community may be temporary,
some communities of circumstance grow and are
sustained in the long-term following an emergency.
(Cabinet Office, 2011, Strategic National Framework on Community Resilience)

20. Explaining resilience in
crowds.
• What is it?
• Under what conditions
do crowds in
emergencies behave
in ways that contribute
to their collective
survival, recovery and
wellbeing?

21. 9-11: Evacuation of the
World Trade Center
• 2973 people died
• The most well-researched
disaster in history

22. 9-11
• Those in Tower 1 (North Tower) had
1hr 42 mins to escape before it
collapsed
• Everyone below the point at which
the plane struck got out in time
• The evacuation of those below point
of impact was a success –
– even without rescuers’
intervention
– fire officers ‘got in the way’ on
some occasions!)
• People ‘naturally’ coordinated their
exit on crowded stairwells.

23. 7th
July 2005 London bombings
(Drury, Cocking, & Reicher, 2009b)
56 people died
700+ injuries.
Emergency services
didn’t reach all
the survivors
immediately – the crowd
was left in the dark for
up to 20 minutes or more

24. The study: data sources
• Accounts from over 146 witnesses
• 90 of whom were survivors
• 17 people interviewed/written responses

25. ‘Helping’ (versus personal ‘selfishness’)
(Helping = giving reassurance, sharing water, pulling people
from the wreckage, supporting people up as they
evacuated, tying tourniquets)
Table: Numbers of people reporting help
Contemporaneous
newspaper
accounts
Archive
personal
accounts
Primary data:
Interviews and
e-mails
‘I helped’ 57 42 13
‘I was helped’ 17 29 10
‘I saw help’ 140 50 17+
‘Selfish’ behaviours 3 11 4
Total 141 127 17

26. ‘I remember walking towards the stairs and at
the top of the stairs there was a guy
coming from the other direction. I
remember him kind of gesturing; kind of
politely that I should go in front- ‘you first’
that. And I was struck I thought, God even
in a situation like this someone has kind of
got manners, really.’
(LB 11)

27. Why did people help each other?
Archive
personal
accounts
Interviews
and
e-mails
Possibility of death 68 12
Not going to die 2 1
With affiliates 8 2
With strangers 57 15
• They were afraid of being killed – but they still
helped!
• They were with strangers, but they still
helped!

28. • The Social Identity hypothesis:
– The emergency itself can bring people
together, by creating a sense of ‘shared fate’
– People feel more ‘united’ (share a social
identity) to the extent that they feel affected as
a crowd

29. Accounting for help
Archive
personal
accounts
Interviews
and
e-mails
Shared fate 11 5
Unity 20 11
Disunity 0 1
Numbers are low but the pattern is as expected:
there was more unity and ‘common fate’ than
disunity, according to survivors

30. These are some of the words that interviewees
used to talk about their relationship with each
other during the events: unity was a key theme.
• ‘unity’,
• ‘together’
• ‘similarity’
• ‘affinity’
• ‘part of a group’
• ‘everybody, didn’t matter what colour or nationality’
• ‘you thought these people knew each other’
• ‘warmness’
• ‘vague solidity’
• ‘empathy’

31. Int: “Can you say how much unity there was on a
scale of one to ten?”
LB 1: “I’d say it was very high I’d say it was seven
or eight out of ten.”
Int: “Ok and comparing to before the blast
happened what do you think the unity was like
before?”
LB 1: “I’d say very low- three out of ten, I mean you
don’t really think about unity in a normal train
journey, it just doesn’t happen you just want to
get from A to B, get a seat maybe”
(LB 1)
• Almost all who referred to ‘unity’ also referred
to ‘help’

32. London bombs study:
Conclusions
• Overwhelming evidence of spontaneous mutual aid
among strangers.
• Some evidence that shared fate creates shared identity,
which enhances mutual helping
• We tested this further with a comparative study (Drury et
al., 2009a) of 11 emergencies found a relation between:
– Reports of common fate and shared social identity
– Shared social identity and reports of help and courtesy/norms

33. 4. Implications for managing mass
emergencies
• First, what do the professional groups who
manage and respond to emergencies
believe about crowd behaviour in such
events?
• We surveyed some of them to find out!

34. The survey

35. Do the professional groups believe that
crowds just ‘panic’?
UK and Swedish police officers, civilian safety professionals:
• Neither agreed nor disagreed that ‘when there is an emergency,
mass panic is inevitable’
• Did not agree that in mass emergencies ‘crowd members act
selfishly’
BUT agreed with the statements:
• ‘ … people in crowds exaggerate the threat’
• ‘ … people in crowds are driven by simple instincts’
• ‘ … false rumours spread easily through a crowd’
• ‘ …the emergency services are not subject to the same tendency to
panic as the crowd’

36. Football stewards
• More ready than other professionals to endorse ‘mass
panic’
Matched sample of general public
• Agreed with every feature of the ‘mass panic’ myth
Therefore, the disaster myth of ‘mass panic’ is widely held,
by professionals – though the public tend to believe it
more!

37. • Why does it matter what the professionals
believe about crowd behaviour in
emergencies?
• Because these different beliefs are the
basis of different forms of emergency
management
• And some forms of emergency
management are better than others!

38. Belief about
mass emergency behaviour
Management
practice
• In the survey, we carried out some correlations and
regressions
• We found that the more people believed in ‘mass
panic’, the more they recommended exclusive expert
control and restricting information from the public…

39. BUT:
•The experts can’t always be around
•The public need to take some initiative in
emergencies
•Exclusive expert control inhibits public initiative!
•AND
•Information and communication empowers the
public
•Withholding information ‘in case there is panic’
produces anxiety!

40. • Based on the research, we made three
recommendations to professionals and
policymakers…

41. 1 Trust and co-operation
RELATIONSHIPS MATTER:
Build the relationship with the public so that your
advice is trusted and people cooperate
‘Information’ becomes ‘communication’ (shared
meaning) when there is TRUST between groups of
people

42. 2 Enhancing social identification
Shared social identity is the basis of collective
resilience. How do we build it?
The language used can facilitate (or undermine)
shared social identity
Between the crowd and the professionals
•Language of unity: ‘we’ (the authorities, public,
employees) are ‘all in the same boat’
•There is a need to be seen to include the public…

43. 3 Accommodating the public urge to
help
• Survivors and witnesses try to
help (whether or not they have
expertise!)
• It’s inevitable
• It builds unity and trust
• It makes them feel better
• It might actually be necessary!
• In the London bombings, the
PUBLIC WERE THE ‘FIRST
RESPONDERS’!

44. Take-home message:
In an emergency, understand the crowd
as a potential resource, not a problem

45. Summary
• Evidence shows that ‘mass panic’ is not a useful concept:
irrationality is an assumption
• Under some conditions, crowds are sources of resilience
(collective survival, recovery)
• We even find resilient behaviour in crowds where there are
no pre-existing social bonds (e.g., London bombs)
• Some professionals believe that crowds simply panic, but
this is not a useful basis for emergency management
• Emergency management should aim to facilitate collective
resilience in the crowd.

46. References and links
• Blake, S. J., Galea, E. R., Westeng, H., & Dixon, A. J. P. (2004).
An analysis of human behaviour during the World Trade Center disaster of 11 Septem
Proceedings of Third International Symposium on Human Behaviour in Fire,
Belfast, September.
• Drury, J., Cocking, C., & Reicher, S. (2009).
Everyone for themselves? A comparative study of crowd solidarity among emergency
. British Journal of Social Psychology, 48, 487-506.
• Drury, J., Cocking, C., & Reicher, S. (2009).
The nature of collective resilience: Survivor reactions to the 2005 London bombings
. International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, 27, 66-95.
• Drury, J. & Novelli, D. (2011).
Crowd representations in event management: Effects on wellbeing and collective res
16th General Meeting of the European Association of Social Psychology,
Stockholm, Sweden, July.