On Monday night the Prime Minister told everyone in the UK to stay at home. Italy, Spain and France were already in lockdown. Two weeks ago the World Health Organization called COVID-19 a pandemic. Most of us are now working from kitchen tables, and many are wondering how long this will last.

The images that defined the first weeks were of empty shelves: no pasta, no hand sanitiser and, for reasons nobody has fully explained, no toilet paper. It is easy to look at those pictures and conclude that people panic and turn on each other when things go wrong.

Then on Tuesday the government asked for 250,000 volunteers to help the NHS deliver food and medicine to people who are shielding. By Wednesday, 405,000 had signed up, more than the population of Coventry. Across the country, more than a thousand local mutual aid groups have appeared on WhatsApp and Facebook in a few weeks.

Both things are true. But one of them tells us much more about human nature than the other. This post looks at what research says about how people behave in a crisis, why it matters for public policy, and what it means for anyone leading a team right now.

1. The panic myth

The idea that crowds panic in an emergency is one of the most durable beliefs in popular culture. It is the plot of most disaster films. It is also, according to the people who study disasters for a living, mostly wrong.

The sociologist Enrico Quarantelli, who founded the Disaster Research Center in the United States in 1963, spent decades studying how people actually behave in floods, earthquakes, fires and explosions. His conclusion was that true panic, meaning wild, selfish flight that harms others, is rare. Far more common is the opposite: people stay calm, help strangers and organise themselves before officials arrive.

The social psychologist John Drury at the University of Sussex has found the same pattern in more recent events, including the London bombings of July 2005. Survivors described a strong sense of "we're all in this together". People who had been strangers seconds earlier helped each other out of the tunnels. Drury's explanation is shared social identity: a common threat turns a collection of individuals into a group, and groups look after their members.

What we expect What the research usually finds
Mass panic and selfish flight Calm, orderly behaviour, even under great danger
People waiting helplessly for rescue Bystanders acting as the first responders
Social breakdown and looting New forms of cooperation and mutual aid
Officials needing to hold back information to avoid panic Clear information leading to better decisions

Rebecca Solnit's book A Paradise Built in Hell (2009) collects many of these stories, from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to Hurricane Katrina. Her point is that the most common failure in a disaster is not public panic. It is what researchers call elite panic: authorities who fear the public more than the threat, and act on that fear.

2. So what about the toilet paper?

Panic buying looks like the panic myth come true. It is better understood as something more ordinary.

  • It is rational for each person, even if it is bad for everyone. If you think the shops might run out, buying a bit more is sensible. When everybody does it at once, shelves empty and the fear proves itself. This is a classic collective action problem, not a sign of madness.
  • Supply chains are lean. Supermarkets hold a few days of stock. A modest rise in demand across millions of households is enough to empty shelves for a while.
  • It is visible. One photo of an empty aisle travels further than a thousand ordinary shopping trips. Seeing it makes the next person more likely to buy extra.
  • It gives people something to do. When a threat is invisible and the future is uncertain, buying supplies is one of the few actions that feels like control.

None of that makes empty shelves less annoying for the nurse coming off a night shift. But it changes the response. You do not fix a coordination problem by scolding people. You fix it with reassurance about supply, purchase limits that apply to everyone, and examples of what others are doing well.

3. The "behavioural fatigue" debate

Behavioural science has been at the centre of a public argument this month. In the first half of March, part of the explanation for the UK's slower move to strict social distancing was a concern that people would comply at first and then tire of the rules, a phenomenon described as "behavioural fatigue". Starting too early, the argument went, would mean people giving up just as the epidemic peaked.

On March 16, an open letter signed by more than 600 UK behavioural scientists, rising to 681 that day, asked the government to publish the evidence behind this idea. The signatories did not say behavioural science had no role. They said that, to the best of their knowledge, there was no sound evidence base for the claim that fatigue would undermine early distancing measures, especially in a situation like this one.

The policy has since moved on, with the lockdown announced on March 23. But the debate is worth remembering for two reasons:

  1. Plausible is not the same as proven. "People will get tired of the rules" sounds like common sense. That is exactly when it needs testing most.
  2. Assumptions about people shape decisions about people. If decision makers believe the public is fragile or irrational, they will choose policies that hold information back. If they believe people can cope, they will treat them as partners.

4. What we already know about quarantine

We are not completely in the dark. On February 26, The Lancet published a rapid review by Samantha Brooks and colleagues at King's College London on the psychological impact of quarantine. Of more than 3,000 papers screened, 24 were included, covering outbreaks such as SARS, Ebola and H1N1.

Most studies reported negative effects, including post-traumatic stress symptoms, confusion and anger. The stressors they identified are a useful checklist for anyone running a team or an organisation this spring:

Stressor What helps
Long or open-ended duration Keep restrictions as short as needed and be honest about timelines
Fear of infection Clear, accurate information about risk
Frustration and boredom Meaningful activity and contact with others
Inadequate supplies Practical support, not just advice
Inadequate information A clear explanation of what is happening and why
Financial loss Reassurance and support about income
Stigma Language that does not blame people who are ill

The review also found that voluntary quarantine, where people understand the reason and see it as altruistic, is associated with less distress than mandatory quarantine. The message for leaders is plain: people cope better when they know why they are being asked to do something and believe it helps others.

5. What this means for managers right now

Most teams have gone remote in a week, with no preparation. Some people are scared for older relatives. Some are home-schooling. Some live alone and will not see another person in the flesh for weeks. The research above translates into a short list of practical behaviours.

Communicate early, often and honestly

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's crisis communication guidance sums it up in three phrases: be first, be right, be credible. In practice:

  • Tell people what you know, what you do not know, and when you will update them. Then update them when you said you would.
  • Do not hide bad news to avoid "panic". People fill silence with rumour, and rumours are usually worse than the truth.
  • Repeat the important things. In a crisis people take in less than usual.

Build the group, not just the plan

Shared identity is what makes people help each other. A team that feels like a team will cover for a colleague who is ill or caring for a child.

  • Hold a short daily check-in, even if there is little to report. The point is contact, not status.
  • Name the situation together: "This is hard for all of us, and we will work it out as a team."
  • Make it easy for people to offer and ask for help, including help that has nothing to do with work.

Give people some control

  • Agree on what must happen this week and let people decide how and when they do it.
  • Accept that output will dip for a while. Say so explicitly, so nobody feels they are failing.
  • Encourage people to set a routine, with a start and an end to the working day.

Watch the people with the least slack

  • Check in one to one with anyone who lives alone, has caring responsibilities or is new to the team.
  • Ask "What would help you most this week?" rather than "Are you OK?".
  • Make sure people know where to find support, including any employee assistance programme.

6. Questions to ask before you make a policy about people

The behavioural fatigue debate is a reminder that every policy about people contains assumptions about people. Whether you are a government or a team lead, it is worth checking yours:

  1. What am I assuming people will do? Write it down.
  2. What is the evidence? If the honest answer is "it seems obvious", treat it as a hypothesis.
  3. Would I be comfortable explaining my reasoning to the people affected? If not, there is probably a problem with the reasoning.
  4. Am I designing for the worst person or the typical person? Rules designed for the rare bad actor often punish everyone else.

Why this matters

  • Expectations shape behaviour. If you treat people as likely to panic, you will hold back information, and that is what produces confusion and distrust.
  • Cooperation is the norm. The volunteers, mutual aid groups and neighbours checking on each other are what disaster research would predict. They are a resource to support, not a surprise.
  • The next few months will test trust. Organisations that are honest now will have credibility when they need to ask more of people later.
  • Evidence matters most when it is inconvenient. A crisis is when plausible assumptions are most tempting and most costly.

Final Thoughts

Nobody knows how long this will go on, or how much harder it will get before it gets better. There will be more empty shelves, more bad news and more days when it feels as if things are falling apart.

But the best evidence we have says that most people, most of the time, respond to a shared threat by looking after each other. That is not a sentimental view. It is what researchers find when they look at what actually happens. The job of leaders, in government or in a five-person team, is to make that easier: tell the truth, give people a reason, and trust them with it.

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