Collective resilience in the disaster recovery period: Emergent social identity and observed social support are associated with collective efficacy, wellbeing, and the provision of social support

Social support and an emerging sense of community are common in flooding, but post-flood group dynamics have not been fully addressed. In the context of a flooded community, we explore how social identification with one’s community emerges and affects wellbeing, collective efficacy, and social support. Results from a quantitative survey show that social identification was positively associated with common fate, collective efficacy, and wellbeing through residents’ expectations of support and shared goals. Importantly, social identification and disaster exposure interacted: For flooded residents, observing support was associated with providing support regardless of levels of social identification. For unaffected residents there was no association between observed and provided support, regardless of levels of social identification. However, for indirectly affected residents observing support was associated to providing support but only when they highly identified with the community. We argue that structural factors should also be considered when exploring the effects of group membership

Collective phenomena in crowds—Where pedestrian dynamics need social psychology

This article is on collective phenomena in pedestrian dynamics during the assembling and dispersal of gatherings. To date pedestrian dynamics have been primarily studied in the natural and engineering sciences. Pedestrians are analyzed and modeled as driven particles revealing self-organizing phenomena and complex transport characteristics. However, pedestrians in crowds also behave as living beings according to stimulus-response mechanisms or act as human subjects on the basis of social norms, social identities or strategies. To show where pedestrian dynamics need social psychology in addition to the natural sciences we propose the application of three categories–phenomena, behavior and action. They permit a clear discrimination between situations in which minimal models from the natural sciences are appropriate and those in which sociological and psychological concepts are needed. To demonstrate the necessity of this framework, an experiment in which a large group of people (n = 270) enters a concert hall through two different spatial barrier structures is analyzed. These two structures correspond to everyday situations such as boarding trains and access to immigration desks. Methods from the natural and social sciences are applied. Firstly, physical measurements show the influence of the spatial structure on the dynamics of the entrance procedure. Density, waiting time and speed of progress show large variations. Secondly, a questionnaire study (n = 60) reveals how people perceive and evaluate these entrance situations. Markedly different expectations, social norms and strategies are associated with the two spatial structures. The results from the questionnaire study do not always conform to objective physical measures, indicating the limitations of models which are based on objective physical measures alone and which neglect subjective perspectives