The role of social identity in emergencies and mass evacuations

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 images of mass emergency and evacuation behaviour

1. Crowd ‘panic ‘Instinct’ overwhelms socialization Emotion outweighs reasoning Rumours and sentiments spread uncritically Reactions disproportionate to danger Competitive and personally selfish behaviours

predominate Ineffective escape

Popular images of mass emergency and evacuation behaviour

2. ‘Blitz spirit’: Adversity brings people together More solidarity when people feel under attack People pull together Resilience, coping, strength Sense of community

Explaining social behaviour and helping in mass emergencies

Affiliation existing social ties) determine how people

behave, whether they survive e.g. fire at the Summerland leisure complex in

1973 (Sime, 1983)

BUT how, when and why do people co-operate with strangers – sometimes even risking their lives to help them? (‘Blitz spirit’)

Research questions

How do crowds behave when faced with danger such as natural disasters or terrorist attacks?

Does ‘mass panic’ occur? Do people just help their families and friends? Does a shared social identity (sense of

unity, togetherness) enhance co-ordination and co-operation in disasters and emergencies?

The research

An archive, questionnaire and interview study of survivors’ experience of the London bombings of July 2005.

A comparative interview study of a number of different emergency events

Experimental simulations of emergency evacuations

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 injuredThose 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

Personally selfish and 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’

Mutual help was common

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)

LB7: these guys helped me up on the platform and then this woman came and asked if I was alright and then held my hand as we walked up the platform together. And um got the lift up to the tube station and sat down for ages and ages and then this really nice woman came and sat with me and put her coat round me kind of looked after me

Female, early 20s, King’s Cross (in carriage bombed)

‘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)

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.

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.

Was there a sense of 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:

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, helping behaviour

Study 2: 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)

H1. Greater common identity = more helping Estimated strength of identity Measured number of helping incidents (which

outnumbered ‘selfish’ incidents anyway)

Level of common identity predicted amount of helping incidents (given, received, observed) marginally significantly, β = 0.42, SE B = 0.23, t(20) = 1.99, p = 0.06.

Int. How would you describe those who were in the evacuation with you? Is there any phrase or word you would use to describe them?

J2 As as a whole group? Int Yeah J2 ……I guess I’d say mutually supportive ..We

were all strangers really we were certainly surrounded by strangers but …. most of, I mean I’d got my kids by me, but most people were split up from anybody they knew, and yet there was this sort of camaraderie like you hear about in the war times and this sort of thing .. there there was certainly a pulling together as apposed to a pulling apart.

(Jupiter 2)

H2. Perceived threat leads to common identity London bombs study suggested that unity

emerged and developed within the event itself: shared fate brings people together.

regression of perceived threat to self on level of common identity was found to be a trend in the predicted direction (β = 0.46, SE B = 0.28, t(14) = 1.86, p = 0.09)

all of a sudden everyone was one in this situ- when when a disaster happens when a disaster happens, I don’t know, say in the war some- somewhere got bombed it was sort of that old that old English spirit where you had to club together and help one another, you know, you had to sort of do what you had to do, sort of join up as a team, and a good example of that would be when some of the fans got the hoardings and put the bodies on them and took them over to the ambulances

(Hillsborough 3)

Issues remaining from field studies

Shared identity measured after the event

Ideally, to show that shared identity matters in helping in mass emergency behaviour, psychologists need to be able to manipulate it in the lab then measure the effects

Study 3: Experimental simulation

Simulation study - design

Participants had task of escaping from fire in underground rail station

In the computer simulation: characters were sometimes in their way some characters were in need of help – but

helping would delay your exit Participants had to escape as quickly as

possible

Simulation study - results

Participants were either cast as ‘group’ members (social identity) or individuals (personal identity)

In most cases, those cast as group members helped the characters in need more than did other participants, even if this meant delaying their exit

In questionnaires they indicated they cared more about the other characters than did the ‘personal identity’ participants

Overall conclusions

Helping behaviour is more common than panic in emergencies and disasters

Shared identity explains some of the helping behaviour (and reduces ‘selfish’ behaviour) in emergencies

In contrast to ‘panic’, an emergency brings people together not drives them apart

Practical implications

If ‘panic’ is wrong and crowd behaviour is social and meaningful More emphasis is needed 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

Survivors’ need for mutual support groups may be therapeutic and need to be researched

The role of group-behaviour in emergencies needs to be included in existing computer-based models of crowd dynamics for increased psychological realism

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