Do you ever freeze up during a crisis?
I read a fascinating article yesterday in Time Magazine entitled “ How To Get Out Alive .” The article discusses(based on events from 9/11) how our instincts in crisis can be our undoing because our brains often somewhat shut down and choose intense disbelief in these stressful situations. Large groups of people facing death act in surprising ways. Most of us become incredibly docile. We panic only under certain rare conditions. Usually, we form groups and move slowly, as if sleepwalking in a nightmare. That neurological process might explain, in part, the urge to stay put in crises. “Most people go their entire lives without a disaster,” says Michael Lindell, a professor at the Hazard Reduction & Recovery Center at Texas A&M University . “So, the most reasonable reaction when something bad happens is to say, This can’t possibly be happening to me.” Lindell sees the same tendency, which disaster researchers call normalcy bias , when entire populations are asked to evac