The hows and whys of public
involvement in mass emergency
helping
John Drury
University of Sussex, UK
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.
Popular image of mass emergency and
evacuation behaviour: 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
Reproduction of ‘panic’ model in
emergency policy and procedures
 Exit widths not communication
 Restriction of public information
 Public and crowd as ‘problem’
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)
Helping versus personally selfish behaviour?
the behaviour of many people in that crowd and
simply trying to help their fellow supporters was
heroic in some cases. So I don’t 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 I’d been able to.. to prevail on
a few more people not to.. put themselves in
danger.
(Hillsborough 3)
Explaining helping behaviour
Norms, roles and affiliation were referred to. BUT so was ‘unity’.
Most who described a sense of unity (12 vs 7) linked it to the
sense of threat they experienced (13 vs 1):
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 everyone’s
involved and let’s do, let’s group together’
(Train accident)
Interview study 1: Conclusions
 N of Ps small, but rich accounts (of n of incidents,
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behaviours, perceptions, feelings)
No evidence for widespread panic
Some evidence for affiliation, roles and norms
BUT the evidence of common unity, and its
correlation with indiscriminate and self-sacrificial
helping, makes a prima facie case for an SCT-based
account of mass evacuation behaviour:
Disaster turns an aggregate into a psychological
crowd
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.
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
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
 ‘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)
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.
‘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.’
(King’s Cross)
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 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.
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 seemed to
be ‘survivor guilt’
Was there a sense of ‘unity’ (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:
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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’
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, help – in line with SCT.
Some conclusions
 ‘Panic’ is a feature of individuals not crowds
 Helping behaviour is more common in emergencies
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than in everyday life
Affiliation and everyday norms may explain some
aspects of mass emergency behaviour but not all
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
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 crowd situations
 This research suggests that self-cat is the
psychological basis of ‘resilience’ (collective
self-help, resources and recovery in
disasters)
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 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 people’s willingness to help each other.
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