If you’ve been to a big concert, or a ball game, with a big crowd of other people, you know what happens when it’s time to leave. No matter how big the exit is, everybody gets jammed up and it goes really slowly.
Engineers in Japan have been looking at what’s going on and how to fix it. What they found makes no sense to us, but it seems to work. Obstacles speed up exiting crowds.
Discovery News (thanks, ReliegiousMarie)
that photo is really claustrophobic!
Scientists / building planners did this with rats in a model of stadium years ago, where scientists flooded the centre of the stadium and the water moves outwards. The rats fearing getting wet / drowning head for the exits. If the exit was larger than one rat there was congestion as too many rats tried to exit at the same time. I would guess that in addition to slow people down sufficiently, that the obstacles cause people to consider queuing in an orderly fashion in advance of reaching the exit.
So, the positive result is that no accidents happen in the exit or at least less, as it apparently wont save much time as the route to the exit takes more time than before.
Hm … people always stand a bit dumb behind the one in front of them … whereas there’s one a bit more to the front who just stands there without moving forward if he/she can … or chatting people ..
We normally wait till a lot of people have gone out … way better .. not bad to relax a little after the show/concert/game, get a bit back to your other self.
Basically the current of people behaves like air currents. Introduce an extra obstacle and the flow will increase.
I think the social psychology in this is, that we actually follow other people around us (it being your friends or just people you were standing next). So when they move faster ahead you will be required to also move faster to stay with them.
When this isn’t the case people are trapped in a so called psychological traffic jam, the same you see after a traffic jam when most drivers still are so conditioned to the slow pace that they still hold up traffic for a bit before realizing that they can actually put the peddle to the metal.
Same applies to divorce. The more obstacles you put in the way, the quicker and more determined they are to finish the marriage.