Empirical studies find crowd panic is rare even under extreme threat.

Evidence

The third problem is that many studies of emergencies that meet all the conditions for crowd panic (threat, a crowd, and only limited escape), find little evidence for it. These include Janis’s (1951) study of behavioural reactions to the Hiroshima bombing, and Sheppard et al.’s (2006) analysis of the 1995 Sarin attack in Tokyo, the 9/11 World Trade Center attack, anthrax incidents in the USA in 2001, the July 7th London bombings, and chemical weapons attacks during World War I. Though mass panic has been called a “disaster myth” by sociologists (e.g., Wenger, Dykes, Sebok, & Neff, 1975), these studies reporting an absence of panic do not in themselves falsify the mass panic concept, of course; like Popper’s (1959) example of the white swan, there may still be counter-examples. A review of public responses to bombing raids during World War II by Jones, Woolven, Durodié, and Wessely (2006) concludes that mass panic is “rare” and where it occurs is only short-lived. — John Drury, The role of social identity processes…, 30

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to studies of the ‘panic’ framing in the 9/11 evacuation and to disaster-sociology literature treating panic as a myth. — connects to: Early mass-panic theory saw crowds as dissolving social bonds into competitive fear via contagion. — John Drury, The role of social identity processes…, 25; Witnessing identity-mates panic or flee can spread that behaviour through crowds — John Drury, The role of social identity processes…, 17; Crowd ‘panic’ is rarely the true cause of disaster deaths — John Drury, The role of social identity processes…, 35 (+2 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: which specific documented emergencies genuinely exhibited mass panic, and what conditions produced it?
• corroborated: 5 independent passages support this claim — John Drury, The role of social identity processes…, 30

Related

• Mass panic is rare even under conditions theorized to produce it (similarity 0.96)
• Early mass-panic theory saw crowds as dissolving social bonds into competitive fear via contagion. (similarity 0.89)
• Even in bad evacuations panic stays confined to a small fraction (similarity 0.87)
• Mass emergency behaviour stems from social identity, not panic or irrationality (similarity 0.86)
• Crowd ‘panic’ is rarely the true cause of disaster deaths (similarity 0.85)
• Mass panic language mostly labels fear, not actual selfish behaviour. (similarity 0.84)
• Witnessing identity-mates panic or flee can spread that behaviour through crowds (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Witnessing identity-mates panic or flee can spread that behaviour through crowds #contradicts (0.85) — John Drury, The role of social identity processes…, 17