Featured Topic: Crisis Management

Featured Topic: Crisis Management

Crisis situations bring to the forefront emotions like fear and panic, creating a need for guidance, comfort, and security, not just in the moment but also over the long term. Although it isn’t possible to anticipate exactly how a crisis will unfold, planning ahead is a crucial part of managing reactions to and recovery from these emergency situations. So, how do you manage a crisis? SBP authors have some insights:

Perry et al. (1982) remarked on the importance of tailoring emergency information to the target audience, noting that the content of warnings can be interpreted in various ways by different groups. They found differences according to ethnicity in relation to respondents’ credulity and actions taken when receiving a flood evacuation warning. Taking a parallel research approach in exploring how best to present crisis-related information, Kim et al. (2017) examined how consumers reacted to companies offering either an excuse or an apology following an ethical violation or a product failure. An apology was more effective in the former setting, whereas making an excuse was more effective in the latter scenario.

Looking at research targeting crisis responses at the national level, Wang et al. (2017) developed the Chinese People’s Cognition and Attitude Toward Postdisaster Psychological Crisis Intervention Scale, which showed strong reliability and validity. Meanwhile, Viney and Clarke (1976) compared crisis responses among children from Papua New Guinea and Australia, and found that although there were some differences between the groups, all the children displayed adaptive coping behavior when cued with social, rather than nonsocial, stimuli.

Crises don’t just affect individuals, though. Exploring interpersonal dynamics in crisis situations, Xue (2022) recruited a sample of 40 three-person teams and asked them to rate each member’s level of influence on the decision-making process during an emergency. The results suggested that, collectively, the groups showed high adaptability, regardless of the level of individual influence each team member was perceived to hold. In another study of team dynamics, Choi et al. (2010) looked at team-level crises in the corporate sector, reporting that external or environmental elements were the deciding factor in the effective implementation of crisis-management tactics, with internal team disturbances playing a comparatively minor role.

Bearing in mind that a crisis situation extends beyond the initial revelation that something has gone wrong, Liu et al. (2024) explored individual behavior in the workplace during and after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. They found that changes in work arrangements positively predicted information-seeking and job-seeking behaviors. Further, Cao and Song (2022) looked into the decision making of subway passengers during COVID-19, reporting that risk awareness and safety perception acted as chain mediators of the link between crowding perception and behavioral decision making.

Other papers in our archives and scheduled for forthcoming publication cover a range of crisis situations like nuclear incidents, emergency department patient care, and the banking sector. Keen to continue tracking the evolving research trends in this area from a behavioral and social psychology perspective? Sign up for a personal subscription to SBP to gain access to several thousand papers spanning the fields of social, behavioral, and developmental psychology.

Crisis communications: Ethnic differentials in interpreting and acting on disaster warnings – Ronald W. Perry, Michael Lindell, and Marjorie Greene, 1982, 10(1), 97–104.

Congruence effects of corporate associations and crisis issue on crisis communication strategies – Sojung Kim, Sejung Marina Choi, and Lucy Atkinson, 2017, 45(7), 1085–1098.

Cognition and attitude of Chinese people toward postdisaster psychological crisis intervention: Scale development and validation – Peng Wang, Junli Zhou, Minxia Xu, Xiaoyue Li, Fengqiang Gao, Hong Dai, Yiping Fan, Lihui Zhang, and Fang Wang, 2017, 45(1), 69–80.

Children coping with crisis in Papua New Guinea and Australia: A cross-cultural application of an analogue – Linda L. Viney and Alex Clarke, 1976, 4(1), 1–10.

The power dynamics of crisis decision-making teams: A test of the threat-rigidity thesis – Gang Xue, 2022, 50(9), Article e11714.

How do groups react to unexpected threats? Crisis management in organizational team – Jin Nam Choi, Sun Young Sung, and Myung Un Kim, 2010, 38(6), 805–828.

Pursuing stability in crisis: The impact of COVID-19-related work changes on information search and job-seeking behaviors – Mengzhe Liu, Yifang Liu, Dongrui Xia, and Hao Liu, 2024, 52(7), Article e13521.

Crowding perception predicts subway passengers’ behavioral decision making during COVID-19 via risk awareness and safety perception – Yang Cao and Mousheng Song, 2022, 50(1), Article e10947.