The purpose of this study was to investigate experimentally the effect of group size in a simulated panic situation on escaping behavior, namely, percentage of successful escaping, degree of jam, and the occurrence of and the conflict among the escaping, aggressive, and concessive response.
In this study, newly developed devices were used in order to simulate a panic.
The following instruction was delivered to subjects: “You are administered electric shock, if you can't escape from that dangerous situation within a specific time limit. ”
In the present experiment, there was only one outlet through which subjects were able to escape one at a time, and besides, each subject had to occupy the outlet for about 20 sec (time in which the escape button is tapped a hundred times).
If a jam occurs in the outlet, subjects were given three choices; aggression, concession or awaiting other persons' responses without responding on their own.
The experiment was carried out in a dark room and subjects were kept from any other sound by using white noise.
The major findings from the present experiment are:
1. As group size grows, the degree of jam increases and the percentage of successful escaping decreases, the decreasing rate being distinctive especially between 4 member and 5 member groups, even if each subject is given a specific length of time in which to escape.
2. Members of medium-sized groups (6-member group) rather than members of large groups (7 & 9-member group) and members of small groups (3 & 4-member) tend to engage in competitive behavior. These findings were interpreted from the point of the conception of unstable reward structure.
3. When aggressive response increases and when concessive response decreases as time passes, all members fail to escape from that dangerous situation.
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