Folks outside of the field may not know what a period of re-examination we are in, in the psychological sciences, of older claims that have been perpetuated for a long time to describe human beings in crowds and groups as selfish, power-mad, automatons, destructive.
These narratives are everywhere, yet as group & identity & crisis researchers have been arguing for a long time, the reactions of people in large crowds in sudden unanticipated emergency are most often marked by calm helping