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Barr, D, Drury, J, Bell, L, Devynck, N, Gayretli, Ç, Lalli, S and Linfield, H (2024) Explaining a collective false alarm: Context and cognition in the Oxford Street crowd flight incident. European Journal of Social Psychology. ISSN 0046-2772
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Abstract
Collective false alarms can cause significant disruption, costly emergency response, and distress. Yet an adequate psychological explanation for these incidents is lacking. We interviewed 39 participants and analysed multiple secondary data sources from the 2017 false alarm in Oxford Street, UK, to develop a new explanation of this phenomenon. There was evidence that awareness of recent collectively self-relevant terrorist attacks lowered the threshold for interpreting ambiguous signals as signs of hostile threat. Interviewees also fled and hid after inferring threats from others’ fear and flight responses. Cooperative behaviour was sporadic and was associated with an emergent sense of groupness that occurred in limited locations. The analysis suggests that crowd behaviour in false alarms has more in common with the meaningful behaviour typically found in real emergencies than with the image of uncontrolled ‘mass panic’ portrayed in news media. These findings have implications for policy in preparing the public for terrorist attacks.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Crowd behaviour; emergency; false alarm; hostile threat; terrorism; 1608 Sociology; 1701 Psychology; 1702 Cognitive Sciences; Social Psychology |
| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology K Law > K Law (General) H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology > HV7231 Criminal Justice Administrations |
| Divisions: | Justice Studies (from Sep 19) |
| Publisher: | Wiley |
| SWORD Depositor: | A Symplectic |
| Date Deposited: | 09 Oct 2024 12:02 |
| Last Modified: | 09 Oct 2024 12:15 |
| DOI or ID number: | 10.1002/ejsp.3105 |
| URI: | https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/24474 |
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