From mass panic
to collective resilience:
Understanding crowd behaviour in
emergencies and disasters
John Drury
University of Sussex
From mass panic
to collective resilience
Acknowledgements
Steve Reicher (St Andrews University)
Chris Cocking (London Metropolitan University)
Damian Schofield, Paul Langston, Andy Burton (Nottingham University)
Andrew Hardwick (University of Sussex)
The research referred to in this presentation was made possible by a grant from
the Economic and Social Research Council Ref. no: RES-000-23-0446
‘Mass 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
– Lack of co-ordination and disorder results
– Grandmother trampled etc.
But!
Panic is actually rare (Brown, 1965; Johnson, 1988;
Keating, 1982; Quarantelli, 1960).
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)
• The concept of ‘mass panic’ persists in
cognate disciplines, applied settings
and popular representations
• Psychology has rejected ‘mass panic’
• Instead: models of crowd sociality
Overview
• Models of mass emergency behaviour
• Explaining emergent sociality – social identity
• Case study
• Experimental study
• Comparative event study
• Implications – theory and practice
The normative approach
Behaviour in emergencies is guided by
everyday social roles and norms
E.g. Beverly Hills Supper Club fire (Johnson, 1988)
• evidence of mundane courtesy
• respect for the elderly
• gender roles maintained
Affiliation
(i) In threat, we are motivated to seek the
familiar rather than simply exit
(ii) The presence of familiar others (affiliates)
has a calming effect, working against a
‘fight or flight’ reaction (Mawson, 2005)
E.g. Fire at the Summerland leisure complex
in 1973. People tried to exit in small
(family) groups, not alone (Sime, 1983)
Advances on ‘mass panic’

Mass emergency behaviour as:
•
•
Cognitive/ meaningful
Social
From ‘vulnerability’ to ‘resilience’
Problems

Normative approach:
– Explanatory power of generic norms?
– Risk to self as ‘normative’?
Affiliation:
– Do crowds of strangers panic?
– Helping strangers not just ‘affiliates’
What kind of sociality?
Normative approach and affiliation:
pre-existing social bonds and/or
interpersonal relationships as the
basis of sociality in emergencies.
Social psychology: collective
behaviour explained in terms of
social identity
A social identity approach to
mass emergencies
Sociality:
• Shared social identification: categorization
of self with others (rather than interpersonal
bonds)
Emergence:
• Shared fate is a possible criterion of shared
self-categorization (Turner, 1987)
• Shared experience in relation to
threat/emergency creates sense of we-ness
(Clarke, 2002)
Applying social identity principles to mass
emergency behaviour:
– reconnects the field with mainstream
social psychology
– offers a new way of understanding
‘resilience’
Case study
7th July 2005 London bombings
(Cocking, Drury, & Reicher, in press)
Four bombs, 56 deaths, 700+ injuries.
Emergency services
didn’t reach all
the survivors
Immediately.
Data
• Contemporaneous newspaper accounts: 141
• Personal (archive) accounts: 127
• Primary data: interviews and written e-mail
responses: 17
• Total: 146(+) witnesses, 90 of whom were
survivors
• Material coded and counted
Helping versus personal ‘selfishness’
(Helping: giving reassurance, sharing water, pulling people from
the wreckage, supporting people up as they evacuated)
Contemporaneous
newspaper
accounts
Archive
personal
accounts
Primary data:
Interviews and
e-mails
‘I helped’
‘I was helped’
‘I saw help’
‘Selfish’ behaviours
57
17
140
3
42
29
50
11
13
10
17+
4
Total
141
127
17
‘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)
Accounting for help
Contemporaneous
newspaper
accounts
Archive
personal
accounts
Primary data:
Interviews and
e-mails
Possibility of death
Not going to die
70
-
68
2
12
1
With strangers
With affiliates
-
57
8
15
4
Total
141
127
17
Accounting for help
Contemporaneous
newspaper
accounts
Archive
personal
accounts
Primary data:
Interviews and
e-mails
Shared fate
Unity
Disunity
0
7
0
11
20
0
5
11
1
Total
141
127
17
‘unity’, ‘together’, ‘similarity’, ‘affinity’, ‘part of a group’,
‘everybody, didn’t matter what colour or nationality’, ‘you
thought these people knew each other’, ‘teamness’[sic]
‘warmness’, ‘vague solidity’, ‘empathy’
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 shared fate referred to unity
• Almost all who referred to unity referred to help
Case study - conclusions
• Little evidence for ‘mass panic’
• Little support for affiliation
• Some support for social identity approach –
shared threat enhances unity enhances cooperation
• Unplanned, uncontrolled study
• Need more data on identification
Experimental analogues
Rationale:
• To manipulate (not simply measure) identification
• To take behavoural (not just self-report)
measures
Detour: The need for a new experimental design
• Threat (distress) versus ethics
• Aids to imagination
Hi-identification (N = 20)
‘You have just been to an England football match at Wembley
Stadium and are now on your way back to Brighton as you have
university in the morning. You and the other England supporters
are making your way through the local rail station to the
Underground, from where you can get the train back home.
Lo-identification (N = 20)
‘You have spent a long day shopping in central London and are
now on the way back to Brighton as you have university in the
morning. You are making your way through the local rail station
to the Underground, from where you can get the train back
home.’
‘You are just about to board the underground train when
you hear someone shout “There’s a fire, get out, get
out!” You look behind you and see large flames at
one end of the platform with people running away
from the fire. Everybody around you looks scared,
and you feel yourself starting to sweat and sense
your heart pumping faster. The fire seems to be
getting bigger rapidly and you start to choke on the
smoke. You realise that you may only have a few
minutes to get back up to ground level and away from
the fire in order to survive.’
• Hi-identification: ‘But there are other people trying to
get out too…The station is still packed with other
supporters…’
• Lo-identification: ‘But there are other people trying to
get out too…The station is still packed…’
Behavioural measures
• More help offered when danger was low (M = 1.30) than
high (M = 1.05), F(1, 38) = 3.23, p = 0.08, ή = 0.08)
• More help offered in hi- (M = 0.70) than lo-identification
(M = 0.48) condition (F(1, 40) = 6.42, p = 0.02, ή = 0.15)
• (No interaction)
• Greater pushing in lo- (M = 18.39) than hi-identification (M
= 9.26) condition (F(1, 37) = 8.27, p = 0.0007, ή = 0.20)
Self-report measures
• Manipulation check – equal levels of engagement
• Greater liking of others in hi-identification condition
Experimental analogues - conclusions
• Some progress in developing a new
experimental paradigm
• Some support for social identity
Ideally, we should combine:
• Control
• Ecological validity
Comparative event study
Interviews with (21) survivors of (11) emergencies
(Drury, Cocking, & Reicher, in press)
Sinking ships (Jupiter, 1988;
Oceanos, 1991)
Ghana football stadium crush
(2001)
Harrods bomb (1983)
Hillsborough crush (1989)
Hotel fire (1971)
Grantham train accident (2003)
Tower block evacuations
(2001, 2002)
Bradford City fire (1985)
Fatboy Slim Brighton beach
party (2002)
• Step 1: Constructing comparisons
Low (n = 9) versus high (n = 12) identifiers
•
Step 2: Origins of enhanced identification
Identification
‘I felt in danger’
‘Shared sense of
danger’
a
Low
56a
67
High
67
92
Total
62
80
Figures are percentage of interviewees endorsing the statement, based on low-identification
sample size of nine and high-identification sample size of 12.
• Step 3: Comparing high and low identifiers on cooperation and selfishness
‘Survivors helped others’
‘Other survivors helped me’
‘I helped other survivors’
‘Other survivors were personally
selfish to others’
‘Other survivors were personally
selfish to me’
‘I was personally selfish to other
survivors’
a
Identification
Low
High
78a (14) 83 (34)
44 (6)
66 (14)
33 (7)
66 (14)
Total
81 (48)
55 (20)
50 (21)
44 (5)
33 (4)
39 (9)
22 (2)
33 (5)
28 (7)
0 (0)
08 (1)
4 (1)
Figures are percentage of interviewees endorsing the statement. (Figures in
brackets indicate number of survivors the interviewee reported seeing or
experiencing.)
• Step 4: Comparing low and high identifiers on
orderliness and disorderliness
‘Order and calm’
‘Control of emotions’
‘Mass panic’
‘Individual-only panic’
‘Everyday rules’
‘Normal roles’
‘Courtesy’
‘Discourtesy’
a
Identification
Low
High
a
22
42
33
42
56
50
44
83
33
67
56
83
11
25
11
0
Total
32
38
53
64
50
70
18
6
Figures are percentage of interviewees endorsing the statements.
‘I don’t think people did lose control of their emotions
and I think the restraint shown by .. particularly several
of the.. individuals that I’ve mentioned I’ve talked about
.. it was the degree of the capacity of people to help
others who were clearly struggling, you know.. it’s it
should be source of great pride to those people I think. [
] I mean a lot of people were very.. as I was you know..
you’re being pushed, you’re being crushed when you’re
hot and bothered you’re beginning to fear for your own
personal safety and yet they were I think controlling or
tempering their emotions to help… try and remedy the
situation and help others who were clearly struggling’
(Hillsborough 2)
Comparative event study - conclusions
• High-identification group more likely to report shared
threat
• Those high in unity at the beginning reported increased
unity over time
• Evidence of solidarity across the data-set – no ‘mass
panic’
• However, solidarity was greater for the high-identification
group
• Most solidarity involved strangers not affiliates
• Broadly in line with case study and experiments
Implications - theoretical
This analysis in line with other approaches
emphasizing that mass emergency
behaviour is:
• Cognitive
• Social
Hence an emphasis on resilience rather
than vulnerability
‘Resilience’
• Individual psychology: a personal trait
• Sociological accounts: emergency organizations
improvised co-ordination (9-11)
• Collective resilience: shared identification allows
survivors to express and expect mutual solidarity and
cohesion, and thereby to coordinate and draw upon
collective sources of support and other practical
resources, to deal with adversity
CR as the social-psychological basis of both individual
resilience/recovery and organizational/structural
resilience?
Implications - practical
• Understanding the crowd as a resource not
a problem
• Example – London bombs: survivors acted as
fourth emergency service
• Catering for the public desire to help, allowing the
public to be involved in its own protection
• Communication: Providing (not withholding)
practical information
If the image of mass panic is
wrong
If crowd behaviour in
emergencies is resilient
(social, cognitive,
resourceful)
Then the crowd is part of
the solution in
emergencies
And the discourse of ‘mass
panic’ is part of the
problem!