Crowd safety: revolutionising crowd management through a better understanding of the psychology of crowds

Press coverage of crowds in an emergency situation often uses familiar phrases like ‘mass panic’, ‘stampedes’ or ‘mob rule’. In a report of 2019, the Sports Ground Safety Authority noted the commonplace assumption that crowds are hostile. They recognised a widespread sense of moral panic over the actions of individuals within crowds, and a perception that crowds acted irrationally when grouped together.

They also recognised the research of the University of Brighton’s Dr Chris Cocking in turning these perceptions around. In fact, those dominant assumptions about crowd responses to emergencies, stressing mass panic and stampedes, are rarely supported by detailed evidence of what actually happens. Indeed, holding such views can hinder effective emergency planning and response. Chris Cocking’s research into crowd psychology, together with wide and diverse knowledge exchange, has now given governments, events organisers and emergency services insight into how the reactions of mass gatherings can be better understood and managed more safely.

The Social Identity Model of Collective Resilience (SIMCR)

Chis Cocking’s initial work with Professor John Drury in the early 2000s developed the Social Identity Model of Collective Resilience (SIMCR). The model is based upon research showing that collective resilience often emerges from people’s shared experience of adversity, the sense that ‘we’re all in this together’, which encourages co-operative, rather than selfish, behaviour. The research argues that the notion of ‘mass panic’ is largely a myth and that social psychological influences on crowd behaviour should be considered alongside the physical properties of crowds such as flow and density.

More recent work has evolved this research and it has become influential in government policy-making and national-scale event planning. Chris Cocking drew on high profile examples including some of the tragic disasters of recent decades. He conducted interview studies of participants’ experiences of crowd flight during riots, showing how the description of crowd behaviour as a ‘stampede’ helped perpetuate more coercive methods of public order policing that then escalated disorder further. He also undertook a study into the role of bystander intervention during the 7 July 2005 London bombings, identifying how uninjured bystanders in emergencies can act as ‘zero-responders’, being at the incident before the arrival of emergency first responders. This recognised members of the crowd as a useful resource which can be utilised by the emergency services in mass emergencies. A study of the language used by survivors of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster then illustrated how the term ‘panic’ used to describe crowd behaviour was a misrepresentation that itself could ultimately have contributed to the tragedy.

Research on the psychology of crowds has impacted on policy and practice

Chris Cocking’s research has contributed new in-depth insights into how shared social identities and collective resilience emerge during disasters. He evidences the increased co-operation among survivors and bystanders (zero-responders) as they identify with and help others in need, ultimately acting as support for official first responders. This has led to a set of practical recommendations for both emergency managers and members of the public to encourage and nurture greater crowd resilience in emergency planning and response, including calls for crowd management strategies to come from a public safety rather than a public order perspective. The twelve recommendations cover the three phases of emergency planning (preparedness phase, response phase and recovery phase) and include recommendations to ‘develop evidence-based, pre-tested communication strategies’, to ‘plan to work with, not against, group norms in emergencies’ to ‘prioritise informative and actionable risk and crisis communication’ and to ‘accommodate the public urge to help’.

His recommendations have been taken up in Cabinet Office papers and the Emergency Planning Society, where they have generated a major shift in organisational thinking, opening up a major opportunity for a change of approach to incident planning and response. Official first responders now increasingly consider the role of possible bystander and survivor involvement in mass casualty incidents. There was a specific mention in the 2018 Kerslake Report into the Manchester Arena bombing, which went on to state that they had seen evidence that supports Chris Cocking’s proposition and consider that members of the public undoubtedly acted as such a ‘force multiplier’ during the initial response in the Manchester Arena foyer. The Emergency Planning Society has moved from a traditional view that sees public involvement as problematic to an approach that now seeks to harness the positive resources of the publics and communities involved. Chris Cocking's research has influenced the preparations behind the 7,000+ public events held in the UK each year.

The next stage of recommendations and wider research into the psychology of crowds

The next steps for Chris Cocking’s research are to enact this change into policy and practice. Options under consideration to enable this change include a Government White Paper, approaches to different governments in terms of legislation, consideration of the Civil Contingencies Act, a reconsideration of planning, policies and training, integrating major incident planning in schools and education, and changes to first aid provision. Thus, whilst this shift is currently at the planning stage, the scale of the planned changes has been described by the Director for Professional Standards and Learning at the Emergency Planning Society as nothing short of revolutionary, affecting all aspects of their work and how they work with other services.