The strange case of the poisonous lady - on the psychology of a crowd

For better or for worse, the wisdom of the crowd defeats any attempt to control it. Everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon

On February 19, 1994, at quarter to eight in the evening, an ambulance screeched to a halt in front of the hospital entrance in the town of Riverside, California. The paramedics pulled out of the vehicle a stretcher on which Gloria Ramirez, 31, was lying. Gloria, a terminally ill cancer patient, was rushed to the intensive care unit suffering from breathing difficulties and heart problems. The medical team is deployed around the treatment bed. Shortly after, Gloria Ramirez went into cardiac arrest.

Efforts to save Ramirez's life went into high gear, and doctors tried to get her heart beating again with electric shocks. One of the nurses stabbed Ramirez's arm to take a blood sample - but at this very moment something strange happened. A strange smell, a pungent aroma like ammonia, rose from the blood test.

The nurse passed the test tube to another staff member, and then...passed out. The doctor in charge ordered to remove the passed out nurse from the room so that she would not interfere with the resuscitation efforts. The pungent smell that came from Ramirez's blood filled the room, and the doctor also collapsed to the floor.
One by one, the doctors and nurses passed out around the bed, and the director of the department was called to the scene. He didn't take any chances: Verramez might have tried to kill herself by drinking dangerous pesticides, and the toxic gases could have spread through the corridors. He ordered an emergency evacuation of all patients and doctors from the ward, and only a small team remained to try and save Ramirez. Their efforts were in vain: Gloria died forty minutes later.

The authorities launched a frantic investigation to find out what exactly happened in those fateful minutes in the intensive care room. Samples were taken from the body of Gloria Ramirez, and the blood of all the staff members who treated her. Despite all the tests, the researchers found no evidence of the existence of known poisons. To be precise, remnants of a medicinal substance were found that could, theoretically, become a poison under certain conditions - but there was no known practical way to create the poison, so this idea was not taken seriously either.
At the end of the tests, the investigative committee announced that in its opinion what happened in the treatment room was the outbreak of 'mass hysteria'. In other words, the panic in which the first nurse was attacked infected the rest of the staff and all the symptoms in them - breathing difficulties, chest pressure, tremors, etc. - are all psychosomatic mind tricks. Panic and fear jumped from one to the other, and each fainter only increased the anxiety of the next one. Evidence of this, the committee noted, is that the paramedics who accompanied Ramirez to the hospital in the crowded ambulance did not sense any abnormal phenomenon.

The results of the investigation were controversial, and many doubted it - but at the heart of the matter is a clear and undeniable psychological fact, which is that humans are very dramatically affected by the emotions and behavior of other people. The study of how the many affect the individual has practical implications, beyond intellectual curiosity.

The United States is a large and vast country, there is nothing new about that. When a general election is held in the United States, the polls outside the East Coast close many hours before the polls on the West Coast. As in Israel, as soon as the polls close on the east coast, the television networks publish the results of their sample polling stations. The voters on the West Coast, those who have not yet had time to vote, turn on the television in the living room and immediately receive a heavy dose of the 'cart effect'.

The 'wagon effect' is the name given to the influence that the opinion of the majority has on the individual's decision. In the case of the elections, if the polls predict a clear victory for one of the candidates, those who have not yet voted may say to themselves: "If so many people voted for this guy...maybe they are right? Maybe I should vote for him too. I also want to be on the winning side, to raise a celebratory toast with the lady at work, next to the coffee machine."

In other words, everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon. This effect has a dominant effect on the true results of the elections, an effect that has been examined, tested and verified in many studies.

Here is another story that will clarify why each of us, personally, should understand the influence of the group on the individual.

Kitty Genovis, 28 years old, was a pretty and quite ordinary young New Yorker. On March 13, 1964, Kitty walked down the street that led to her home in Queens. It was three in the morning.
If the opening so far reminds you of a thousand and one plots of routine horror movies, you are not far from the truth. When she was not far from the door of the house, a man attacked her from behind and stabbed her violently in the back. Kitty collapsed to the floor, screaming and yelling for help. From one of the houses in the alley, one of the neighbors shouted to the attacker to leave the girl - but did not leave the house to help her.

The attacker, who feared being discovered, fled the scene. Kitty dragged herself with great difficulty towards her house.
Ten minutes later, the attacker realized that the neighbor did not intend to go out into the street. He returned to the alley, to complete the job. He found Kitty bleeding on the front steps of her door. While she was dying, he brutally raped her - then stabbed her again, murdering her.

It might have been another routine and insignificant murder in the violent streets of New York, if not for an article published two weeks later in the influential newspaper 'The New York Times'. "Thirty-eight neighbors witnessed the murder," cried the lines in the article, "and no one lifted a finger to save Kitty Genovis." No one called the police. No one thought to intervene.

This article caused a huge uproar in the United States. Kitty's sad story became a symbol of the coldness and indifference of the residents of the Big Apple and the East Coast in general. There were those who saw in the murder the general change that had taken place in the character of the United States, to the harmful effects of progress and social isolation.

The article in the New York Times spurred psychologists and sociologists to investigate how it was possible that so many people witnessed a terrible crime and did not lift a finger to help. This phenomenon has been known for many years: it is the 'bystander effect'. The 'bystander effect' states, simply, that the more people there are at the scene of an incident, the less likely it is that any of them will help the victim. In other words: it is better to collapse from a heart attack with one or two people around you, than fifty people: the chance that someone will volunteer to save you is smaller.

The 'bystander effect' is very easy to reproduce in a controlled experiment. The psychologists put an actor into a group of people, and asked him to collapse on the floor and flutter convincingly. They measured how long it takes the group to assist him. The clock doesn't lie: the higher the number of people in the group, the longer it took to find a volunteer to help.

Two possible reasons have been put forward for this phenomenon. The first one says that everyone is waiting for some signal, a guiding sign from someone, that it is time to act. Because everyone is waiting, it takes longer for something to actually read. The second possible reason is that the more people around, the less the sense of personal responsibility of each viewer. Everyone says to themselves 'there must be someone in the audience who is more qualified or more qualified than me to handle the situation'.

If you, the readers, get into trouble in a crowd of people, remember the 'bystander effect'. Do not cry for help in general. Point to a specific person in the audience, no matter who, and call him: "You with the green shirt - call an ambulance!". In this way, you increase that person's sense of personal responsibility, and also give the signal to the group that it is time to act.

And what about the story of Kitty Genovis? The killer, a mentally ill necrophile, was caught and put in prison.
But the story in the New York Times article...it was not true. The article was misleading and the facts in it are completely wrong. Only twelve people, not thirty-eight, witnessed the murder in any way - and none of them saw the second attack. Only one neighbor heard Kitty's cries, and thought it was a family dispute at all. He actually did call the police: but the call was ignored at the police headquarters. Bottom line, none of the neighbors had any reason to think that something so horrific was happening right under their noses.

But the facts only came to light many years after the murder. What is important is that the article in the New York Times encouraged the psychologists and sociologists - who did not know that this was a collection of nonsense - to engage in this important field of research.

To the great difficulty of understanding the processes that take place within an audience, in recent years a phenomenon has been added that has made the problem much more complex and difficult. This is the Smart Mob phenomenon.
The smart mob was created following the massive penetration of mobile and efficient communication devices - cell phones, laptops, pagers, etc. Everyone in the audience has access to real-time information, and can be updated about the goals of the gathering and the expected conduct within seconds.

But the smart mob also has darker and more dangerous sides than a mass pillow party. This is probably the reason why it is called a 'mob', even a 'crowd'.

In 1999, the World Trade Organization conference was held in the city of Seattle in the United States. This conference was a golden opportunity for organizations opposed to globalization to express their protest about the growing gap, they claim, between the rich and poor countries of the world. They were also joined by student movements, labor organizations and just anarchist groups who were happy for the opportunity to make a little mess.

After weeks of preparations and early twins, the day came when the conference was held. Tens of thousands of protesters appeared out of nowhere and took over the main intersections in the area where the conference will be held. The protesters blocked the traffic and prevented the conference participants from reaching the hall. The anarchists overturned cars, broke shop windows and burned trash cans.

The surprised police tried to break up the demonstration, but the mob was ready for it. Text messages beeped and cellphones buzzed: 'The cops are coming from X Street', or 'Get to Way Street quick.' The police were powerless against a mob of rioters so smart that they knew how to hit them quickly in places where they were weak or dodge them nimbly when necessary. The result was what is now known as the 'Battle of Seattle': long days of violent clashes between the police and the protesters, until finally the former managed to restore order.

Since that success, the smart mob phenomenon has gained momentum, and we are beginning to feel its influence all over the world. In the Philippines in 2001 a smart mob succeeded in ousting the country's president. Four years later, in France, all of Paris felt the relief of Arab protesters who warned each other about the local police through text messages. One of the writers who wrote about the smart mob said that in his opinion, there is no city on earth that ten thousand serious and determined demonstrators cannot completely silence.

Is the smart mob just an interesting cultural phenomenon that will pass away as quickly as it appeared, or perhaps a real and tangible threat to the stability of regimes around the world? This is just one of many questions that sociologists who study crowd psychology would like to know the answer to. And now, excuse me - I need to find my pillow.

(This article is taken from the program script 'Making history!', a bi-weekly podcast about science, technology and history)