Images of group panic and collective chaos are ubiquitous in Hollywood movies, mainstream media and the rhetoric of politicians. But, contrary to these popular portrayals, group panic is relatively rare. In disasters people are often models of civility and cooperation.
References
1.
ClarkeLee. Mission Improbable: Using Fantasy Documents to Tame Disaster.Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Shows how and why leaders, claiming to fear public panic, sometimes overpromise safety.
2.
EriksonKai. A New Species of Trouble: Explorations in Disaster, Trauma, And Community.New York: W. W. Norton, 1995. Masterful collection of stories about how people respond to catastrophe; community and trust rather than panic are the key issues.
3.
Extreme events: http://www.albany.edu/cpr/xedm. This links to the proceedings of a conference on “extreme events,” as the National Science Foundation dubs them.
4.
FreudenburgWilliam F.“Risk and Recreancy: Weber, the Division of Labor, and the Rationality of Risk Perceptions.”Social Forces71 (June 1993): 900–32. People worry about risk not because they are panicky but because our leaders often don't warrant trust.
5.
HerseyJohn. Hiroshima.New York: Bantam Books [1946] 1986. Best existing account of what it was like to be at a nuclear ground zero. Resignation and depression were more prevalent than panic.
6.
JanisIrving Lester. Air War and Emotional Stress.New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951. The Japanese response to atomic attacks: little panic.
7.
JohnsonNorris R.“Panic and the Breakdown of Social Order: Popular Myth, Social Theory, Empirical Evidence.”Sociological Focus20 (August 1987): 171–183. Close investigation of some modern disasters, in search of the elusive panic.
8.
QuarantelliE. L.“Sociology of Panic.” In International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences.Oxford, UK: Pergamon Press, 2001. A don of disaster research revisits a conclusion he reached many years before: “panic” isn't a useful scientific concept.
