Titanic Survivors Study: A Closer Look at Self-Preservation

You're on a sinking ship and you have just 10 minutes to make a decision: Do you save yourself, or do you help the other passengers to safety?
Now, imagine the same scenario, except you have two hours longer to make your decision. Do you make the same choice? Maybe not, according to a study published in the journal Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences.

Researchers from the University of Zurich, the Center for Research in Economics, and Queensland University compared the survivor profiles of passengers from two famous shipwrecks, the Titanic and the Lusitania, to see how they differed. In many ways, these two ships were similar: both were large passenger ships and both sank in the early 1900s. But, there is one major difference: The Titanic sank slowly, over a period of 2 hours 40 minutes, while the Lusitania slipped beneath the waters in a matter of just 18 minutes. And that difference in time had a huge impact on who survived -- a discrepancy researchers attribute to passengers on the Lusitania acting instinctively in self-preservation, and on the Titanic, passengers first helping other passengers.On the Titanic, children were about 15 percent more likely to survive and women approximately 50 percent more likely to survive than men on the ship. Young men were more likely to die on the Titanic, but on the Lusitania, young men were almost 8 percent more likely to survive than other passengers. Researchers attribute the difference to the extra time -- just 2 hours 22 minutes -- in which they say that social norms ("women and children first") made it more likely that they were given seats on lifeboats.

But, while the extra time may have made women and children more likely to receive aid, whether these findings can be extrapolated or applied to aid in other disasters -- especially natural disasters -- is another matter. In some cases it seems that the longer the crisis goes on, the more trouble women and children may have in actually receiving aid.

Following the earthquake in Haiti, the World Health Organization's Pan American division issued a statement of concern that, in the sometimes disorganized struggle to get to limited supplies of food, water and medicine sent as part of aid packages, women and children were being shouldered aside. And the World Food Programme ended up organizing some food distributions just for women in response to worries that food in the initial aid packages simply wasn't making it to them or to their households. Additionally, women in Haiti were more likely to fall victim to violent attacks after the earthquake.

Figuring out the best way to distribute aid in a disaster is hardly an exact science. But the results of the study are a good reminder that -- if we want to make sure that aid delivers the maximum benefit -- considering what is happening socially is also a necessity.