1992 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Experimental study concerning escape behavior of big size group and intragroup conflict in a simulated panic situation
| Project/Area Number |
02610060
|
|---|
| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for General Scientific Research (C)
|
| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
|---|
| Research Field |
Psychology
|
|---|
| Research Institution | Kyushu Institute of Technology |
|---|
Principal Investigator |
KUGIHARA Naoki Kyushu Institute of Technology, Engineering, Associate Professor, 工学部, 助教授 (60153269)
|
|---|
| Project Period (FY) |
1990 – 1992
|
| Keywords | Escape behavior / Big size group / Maze escape / Panic / Emergence / Bottle neck situation / Disaster / Mathematical escape model |
|---|
| Research Abstract |
Four kinds of experiment were done under this research title. First experiment was three-dimensional maze escape of big size group. About 40 participants escaped at once. As a result of the experiment, the large jam was occurred in the crisis condition in immediately after the departure, the turning point, and the corner compared with non-crisis condition. Moreover, crisis lengthened escape time and locomotive distance in the maze. The phenomenon that the number of escape success person increased and decreased intermittently was observed because the generations of congest and the collapses were repeated.
The second experiment tried to clarified several causes of the decrease of the escape success rate in the crisis. The causes that may be thinkable are a rise of group member's average activity level by de-individuation or by social facilitation and the existence of small number of self-regard person. To clarify the causes, a bottleneck situation was set. In this situation, width of outlet changes in proportion to group size. In spite of above experimental procedure, escape time was not constant. In other word, the time spent in the bottle neck situation was longer in big size group than in small group. This result suggests that the decrease of escape effectiveness of a large size group was not caused only by small number of self-regard person.
The aim of the third experiment is to compare the effects of fear on escape behavior of individual and group conditions in a maze. The results: Fear increased the time and locomotion required to reach the exit, because of the occurrence of a traffic jam in the group escape condition, however, fear reduced time in the individual escape condition.
The forth experiment attempted to investigate the route selection behavior on a T shaped divergent point in a maze, and to make a mathematical model that expresses stream of people's locomotion. The data derived from the model fairy correspond to the experimental data.
|
