Modern research shows the public work together selflessly in an emergency, motivated by a strong impulse to help
“The notion that people panic and run screaming for the exits is a Hollywood fiction,” said Prof Stephen Reicher, an expert in group behaviour at the University of St Andrews.
“Characteristically, people stay and help each other,” he said. “We found this during the 7/7 attacks on the underground and the 1999 attack on the Admiral Duncan pub in London, where people looked after each other even though they feared other bombs.
“In our own research on the Leytonstone tube attack in 2015, there was an amazing level of spontaneous coordination by bystanders: some directed others away from danger. Some distracted the attacker. Some confronted the attacker. Each was able to act because of the others. Heroism was a feature of the group, not just the individual,” he added.
Prof Clifford Stott, a specialist in the psychology of crowds and group identity at Keele University, agreed. Modern research, he said, showed “bystander apathy” was a myth. Instead, strangers often work together in emergency situations with highly sophisticated unity.”
Bystander apathy is a myth invented by the New York Times to cover up that the police were called by several residents of the building, but the cops refused to act. The cops then told the Times that 38 people just watched her die (a seemingly arbitrary number and a physical impossibility based on where the attacks occurred), and the Times ran with it. In fact, Kitty was alive when the cops got there, and was being held and comforted by one of her friends who lived in the building because one of the people who saw her get attacked from across the street called her friend to go get her. Because people care.
You have just been attacked. How likely is it that someone will come to your help? If you remember the infamous case of Kitty Genovese in 19
I will always re-blog this. The story of Kitty Genovese’s murder has gone down in history as a story about everyone watching it happen and doing nothing and none of the story is true.
May I also offer:
This book is about how during several past disasters, people came together to help one another, and it was the elites who panicked and assumed that people were going to riot and loot.
When shit goes down, people help.
I was in southern Ontario during great eastern North America blackout of 2003. Every movie I've ever seen would have imagined an orgy of looting and senseless violence. Instead, i remember people forming orderly lines, communicating what information was available, being helpful to one another.
Helping is such a strong instinct in humans that we have to train people to not run into enclosed spaces with a person unconcious in them or near overturned chemical trucks because there might be a gas leak or other invisible hazards and they'd probably die too. People have died jumping into water that was electrified because someone already in it was drowning and they didn't think twice. Humans are hardwired to just help, so much so we hardly ever consider that there might be something there that could hurt us too, and tbh I think that's something we can all be proud of.
