Crowd behaviour in CBRN incidents

John DruryDepartment of Psychology

Sussex University

Acknowledgements:Chris Cocking (London Metropolitan University, 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.

Overview

• Early models of mass reactions to emergencies: ‘crowd panic’

• Practical implications and problems

• Explaining social behaviour in emergencies

• London bombs (7/7) study

• Theoretical and practical implications

Early models of mass reactions to emergencies: ‘crowd panic’

In the face of threat:– ‘Instinct’ overwhelms socialization– Emotions outweigh reasoning– Rumours and sentiments spread uncritically through

‘contagion’– Reactions are disproportionate to the danger– Competitive and selfish behaviours predominate– Ineffective escape

Practical implications of ‘crowd panic’:

• Emphasis on physical aspects of public space

• Communication less important

Empirical problems for ‘crowd 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)

The problem is often people not taking the emergency seriously rather than taking it too seriously!

Explaining social behaviour in crowds in emergencies

Order and co-operation are common.

e.g. Beverly Hills Supper Club fire, 1977

Theories of social behaviour:

• Normative approaches – norms, social roles guide behaviour

• Affiliation – people seek the familiar, stay in given groups

Explaining the extent of co-operation

• People also help strangers

Self-categorization theory: • ‘shared fate’ creates sense of ‘we-ness’

(shared identity)• people care for and help others in the

crowd in an emergency because they cognitively group them with ‘self’

London bombs (7/7) study

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.

Primary data12 face-to-face interviews plus seven e-mail responses

= data from at least 145 people, most of whom (90) were actually caught up in the explosions

Our research questions:

• Was there ‘crowd panic’ (i.e. predominance of personally selfish behaviours)?

• How common was help?

• How far was any help explicable in terms of shared identity?

Was there ‘crowd panic’?

• There was talk of ‘panic’:

57 eye-witness accounts used the term ‘panic’.

20 eye-witness accounts explicitly denied that there was panic

BUT

37 accounts referred to ‘calm’ amongst those affected by the bombs

58 to an ‘orderly evacuation’.

How common was help?

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

‘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 [ ] I’d 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)

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.

Explaining help: Affiliation?

Most of the people affected were amongst strangers:

• nearly 60 people in the personal accounts reported being amongst people they didn’t 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.

Explaining help:Shared fate, shared identity

• There was a widespread fear of danger or death through secondary explosions or the tunnel collapsing.

• Secondary data: Occasional references to unity and shared fate, 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: ‘empathy,’ ‘unity,’ ‘together,’ ‘similarity,’ ‘affinity,’ ‘part of a group,’ ‘you thought these people knew each other,’ ‘vague solidity,’ ‘warmness,’ ‘teamness,’ ‘everybody, didn’t matter what colour or nationality’.

Explaining help:Everyday norms?

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

• CC can you say how much unity there was on a scale of 1-10

• LB1 I’d say it was very high I’d 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 I’d say very low- 3 out of 10 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

• Therefore not simply everyday norms

Theoretical conclusions

• CBRN versus other kinds of emergencies? to the extent that the attack puts people ‘all in the same boat’, the psychological effects will the same.Hyams, Murphy & Wessely (2002) Responding to chemical, biological or nuclear terrorism: The indirect and long-term health effects may present the

greatest challenge. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 27, 273-291. • Shared social identity is the psychological basis

for the concept of ‘resilience’ (collective self-help, resources and recovery in disasters)

Practical implications

• If panic is wrong and crowd behaviour is social and meaningful– More emphasis on communicating with the crowd and

less on the crowd as a physical entity (exit widths)

• If there is a willingness to help among strangers– The emergency services need to allow and cater for

people’s willingness to help each other.– Treat the public as an ally (Cf. Glass & Schoch-Spana (2002). Bioterrorism and the people: How to

vaccinate a city against panic. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 34, 217-223.)