Comments on: Disaster Psychology: Protect the Women—If There’s Time

By: guy with an essay to write

guy with an essay to write — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 01:00:33 +0000

wheres the numbers how many women survived and how many men on the Lusitania?

By: lenni

lenni — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 18:53:05 +0000

it’s curious that they didn’t study the Estonia, where the passengers were very politely instructed by the staff to return to their rooms -and they did, even as the ship sank and hundreds died

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 17:44:33 +0000

Interesting to reflect that in Titanic many of the lifeboats went half-filled (as I understand it) due to what might be called an excess of chivalry: the crew in charge apparently overinterpreted the mandate for women and children first as w and c only; ?Edwardian codes run amok or (as I suspect) a more atavistic/ev. psych. instinct of males to eliminate rivals/”protect” (dominate) females that may have emerged under pressure… (probably trumped however by survival instinct under Lusitania-like time constraint). Anyway just my $.02.

By: Sasha

Sasha — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:23:56 +0000

Before this article, I didn’t really know about the Lusitania. I definitely have heard about the Titanic. I’m going to look into that. Also they should compare more sources because otherwise it’s just a bit weak. However this was still a very interesting article. Thanks.

By: Greg

Greg — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:00:35 +0000

18 minutes is not alot of time. I suspect that it may have been impossible to sort out the passengers and establish order in that amount of time, espcially considering that there would have been mass confusion, smoke and fire, and that the ship was probably listing heavily. Those who could get on just did in no particular order. The crew would have been glad just to get that many passengers off.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:05:04 +0000

I agree with Lonely Flower and Dan that this is far from conclusive, but consider this. Each shipwreck involved thousands of people. While the events numbered only 2, that’s thousands of samples of human behavior. Still, I would agree that meta-confounds do prevent any real conclusive result from being drawn.

By: feralboy12

feralboy12 — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:59:51 +0000

Much like unhappy families are each unhappy in their own way, each sinking ship disaster has its own unique qualities. The Titanic smacked an iceberg, the Lusitania was sunk by a torpedo (and had a secondary explosion), the Andrea Dorea suffered a collision, the Indianapolis waited four days for help.
Interesting subject, though. Like Charlie Brown, I’ve always been fascinated by disaster.

By: Gina

Gina — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:57:26 +0000

“Torgler and his colleagues are studying the reactions to more recent disasters …”

A disaster can be many things. Maybe including earthquakes, fires, flooding, tornadoes and other phenomenon would be prudent. All have time-lines and severities, include both male, female, children and social factors to them.

By: Cathy A

Cathy A — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:40:08 +0000

Well, you can’t exactly do a double blind controlled study by sinking two ships in the modern day, with identical passenger rosters, and seeing whether the fast sinking affects survival rates. The cost would be astronomical – not to mention the IRB nightmares it would cause!

Are there other historical data available for shipwrecks? If so, then there definitely needs to be more analysis. This can be considered a preliminary study, one that gives them a working hypothesis.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 02:10:08 +0000

Lonely Flower has a great point. Only two examples? Come on, that’s not science.

By: Lonely flower

Lonely flower — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:32:01 +0000

Did they study many shipwrecks, or just these two examples?
I think many shipwrecks should be studied before reaching to this conclusion.

By: Jay Fox

Jay Fox — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:19:53 +0000

Yeah, you go ahead and text that. Just get the hell out of the way when you do, the rest of us are getting out!