Cultural Norms in Crisis

During last class someone in class brought up the recent study that found Britons suffered a strikingly large percentage of the fatalities during the Titanic sinking. Intrigued, I found an article on the study and learned more about this claim. Though there is no way to truly explain the phenomenon, the prevailing theory is that British 'queued up' and waited to board life-boats while American's were more prone to jump right on.

What strikes me is not that American's would act savagely, but that cultural norms could still prevail in a crisis situation. The impassibility of these norms and traditions, deeply embedded in our psyche, govern our rationality even during the irrational. Most of the passenger's on the Titanic had probably never been on a sinking ship before, yet they all (well, the British anyway) collectively decided on the norms of behavior and conformed to such. I would have thought irrationality would have prevailed in such a circumstance, however one man is quoted saying "be British, boys!"

If our cultural norms and biases are present even in our final moments, it makes wonder how we might overcome them to maintain good diplomacy, international relations.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/more-britons-than-americans-died-on-titanic-because-they-queued-1452299.html