Study to assess crisis behaviour

Research scant, lead scientist says Subjects will face terror situations

OTTAWA— The federal defence department wants to know how people will respond to a biological or radiological attack so emergency workers can better plan how to manage such situations.

Will people panic and overreact? Will they ignore authorities or undermine their efforts? Will they abandon jobs and evacuate cities or stay home? Will they exploit the situation and break the law or pitch in and help?

Defence Research and Development Canada is launching a study to find out.

While there have been many academic laboratory studies on the effects of emotion on behaviour, there is virtually no research involving realistic crisis situations, says David Mandel, the project’s lead scientist.

Defence wants to present research subjects with terror situations and gauge their responses, Mandel said. It’s leaving it up to the yet-to-be-determined contractor to decide how best to do that.

While some risk analyses acknowledge that emotion and other psychological factors must play a role among those targeted by terrorist attacks or the like, most don’t address them in detail, Mandel said.

“ We don’t really have tools in place to measure those psychological effects and part of what we’re interested in doing with this contract is actually having experts help us develop methods for doing that properly.” They will look at past incidents, such as the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States and even New Orleans’ response to Hurricane Katrina — anything, Mandel says, that could help identify so-called psycho- social effects. They want to know not only how people respond to the threat, but how they respond to the responders and the policies that direct them.

“ When people come in as firstresponders and members of the public are suspicious of their intentions, that’s a problem that goes beyond the initial crisis itself,” he said.

“ It has to do with problems that stem from the public’s perception of the policymakers’ and first- responders’ responses and their intentions. How would the public respond to their policies and would those policies, in and of themselves, potentially create problems?”

Social and economic factors may dictate public reaction.

In New Orleans, for example, looting and public safety were major concerns largely because many of those affected were poor blacks who saw the storm’s aftermath as an economic and social- justice opportunity. Mandel came up with the idea for the $ 200,000 study after attending a workshop that addressed the psychosocial consequences of a hypothetical dirty bomb in Toronto. “ There was a lot of discussion and a fair degree of disagreement,” he said. Some workshop participants said people would panic and exit the city and predicted a large amount of crime. Others argued they were underestimating the public’s resilience, contending people would pull together to help and solve problems.

Mandel, a psychologist specializing in judgment and decisionmaking research, went away with no clear answers, except the knowledge that the field needed more study. Public Works is in the last stages of tendering a contract for the study.