Citation

Pepitone A, Diggory JC, Wallace WH. J. Abnorm. Soc. Psychol. 1955; 51(3): 706-708.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1955, American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1037/h0049363

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Individual response to a disaster situation is investigated by requiring subjects to describe what action they would take if faced with an impending bombing plane poison gas raid. For 34 Ss the disaster situation involved threat of death, for 33 Ss, only a mild, temporary incapacitation. Three patterns of action appear, evacuation, active defense, and encapsulation, with some probability that the tendency to take the safest path varies with the degree of threat. The willingness to assist others varies inversely as the degree of threat, while the saving of objects is more fundamentally associated with the mode of escape the individual takes than with the degree of threat. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)