Crowd behaviour
in CBRN incidents
John Drury
Department 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 data
12 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 selfhelp, 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, 217223.)