Word: human
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...Human beings can be a devious lot. At some point, even the most moral of us have skulked or sneaked or filched something we weren't supposed to - even if it were just a cookie from the kitchen. Of all the things that get our sneakiness juices going, there is nothing like a little darkness...
...hard to remember your manners when you think you're about to die. The human species may have developed an elaborate social and behavioral code, but we drop it fast when we're scared enough - as any stampeding mob reveals...
...distinct survival profiles - the most significant being time. Most shipwrecks are comparatively slow-motion disasters, but there are varying degrees of slow. The Lusitania slipped below the waves a scant 18 min. after the German torpedo hit it. The Titanic stayed afloat for 2 hr. 40 min. - and human behavior differed accordingly. On the Lusitania, the authors of the new paper wrote, "the short-run flight impulse dominated behavior. On the slowly sinking Titanic, there was time for socially determined behavioral patterns to reemerge...
...fact that the two vessels did sink is an unalterable fact of history, and while ship design and safety protocols have changed, the powder-keg nature of human behavior is the same as it ever was. The more scientists learn about how it played out in disasters of the past, the more they can help us minimize loss in the future...
...that throughout our lives, we have a sometimes distorted sense of the ability of darkness to conceal. Toddlers cover their eyes when they're playing hide and seek in the belief that if they can't see you, you can't see them. In his famed 1969 experiments on human moral behavior, Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo found that if subjects were wearing dark hoods and baggy clothes, they were more inclined to administer electric shocks to other volunteers than they otherwise would...