Fear contagion and mass panic? What fear does to crowds

International audienceFear is thought to be a highly contagious emotion, such that it is conducive to masspanic, whereby each crowd member experiences intense fear and maximizes their ownsurvival at the expense of others. However, more than fifty years of research havedepicted crowds facing deadly threats as calm and orderly. In this talk, I will discusswhat fear does to crowds by evaluating the claims that (i) fear is contagious, (ii) that itcan lead to ‘mass panic’, and (iii) that it promotes self-preservative behavior. I will alsotry to sketch an alternative view, whereby the experience of fear leads to the productionof alarm signals (‘alarm calls’) and quickly promotes allo-oriented behaviors, such asmobbing and collective defense, as typically observed in a number of nonhumanspecies