Word: lusitania
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...study those differences, the authors of the PNAS paper - Bruno Frey of the University of Zurich and David Savage and Benno Torgler of Queensland University - combed through Titanic and Lusitania data to gather the age, gender and ticket class for every passenger aboard, as well as the number of family members traveling with them. They also noted who survived and who didn't. (See a survival guide to catastrophe...
...results told a revealing tale. Aboard the Titanic, children under 16 years old were nearly 31% likelier than the reference group to have survived, but those on the Lusitania were 0.7% less likely. Males ages 16 to 35 on the Titanic had a 6.5% poorer survival rate than the reference group but did 7.9% better on the Lusitania. For females in the 16-to-35 group, the gap was more dramatic: those on the Titanic enjoyed a whopping 48.3% edge; on the Lusitania it was a smaller but still significant 10.4%. The most striking survival disparity - no surprise, given...
There were a lot of factors behind these two 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...
That theory fits perfectly with the survival data, as all of the Lusitania's passengers were more likely to engage in what's known as selfish rationality - a behavior that's every bit as me-centered as it sounds and that provides an edge to strong, younger males in particular. On the Titanic, the rules concerning gender, class and the gentle treatment of children - in other words, good manners - had a chance to assert themselves...
Other variables beyond the question of time played important roles too. The Lusitania's passengers may have been more prone to stampede than those aboard the Titanic because they were traveling in wartime and were aware that they could come under attack at any moment. The very nature of the attack that sank the Lusitania - the sudden concussion of a torpedo, compared to the slow grinding of an iceberg - would also be likelier to spark panic. Finally, there was the simple fact that everyone aboard the Lusitania was aware of what had happened to the Titanic just three years earlier...