Journal of Economic PerspectivesVolume 25, Number 1Winter 2011Pages 209222

This article is substantially similar to: 1) Frey, Bruno S., David A. Savage, and Benno Torgler. 2010. Interaction of Natural Survival Instincts and Internalized Social Norms Exploring the Titanic and Lusitania Disasters. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(11): 486265. 2) Frey, Bruno S., David A. Savage, and Benno Torgler. 2010. Noblesse oblige? Determinants of Survival in a Life-and-Death Situation. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organizations, 74(12): pp. 111. 3) Frey, Bruno S., David A. Savage, and Benno Torgler. 2011. Who Perished on the Titanic? The Importance of Social Norms. Rationality and Society, 23(1): 3549. JEP regrets that these articles were not cited in the original publication.

Behavior under Extreme Conditions: The Titanic Disaster

Bruno S. Frey, David A. Savage, and Benno Torgler

uring the night of April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg on her maiden voyage. Two hours and 40 minutes later she sank, resulting in the loss of 1,501 livesmore than two-thirds of her 2,207 passengers and crew. This remains one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history and by far the most famous. The disaster came as a great shock because the vessel was equipped with the most advanced technology at that time, had an experienced crew, and was thought to be practically unsinkable (although the belief that the ship had been widely believed to be truly unsinkable actually arose after the sinking, as explained in Howell, 1999). The Titanics fame was enhanced by the considerable s number of films made about it: not including various made-for-television movies and series, the list would include Saved from the Titanic (1912), In Nacht und Eis (1912), Atlantic (1929), Titanic (1943 and 1953), A Night to Remember (1958), Raise the Titanic! (1980), and of course the 1997 Titanic, directed by James Cameron and , starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. In 1985, a joint AmericanFrench expedition, led by Jean-Louis Michel and Dr. Robert Ballard, located the wreckage and collected approximately 6,000 artifacts, which were later shown in an exhibition that toured the world.

Bruno S. Frey is Professor of Economics, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zurich, Switzerland, and Distinguished Professor of Behavioural Science, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, U.K. David A. Savage is a Graduate Student, School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. Benno Torgler is Professor of Economics, School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. Frey and Torgler are also associated with CREMACenter for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts, Basel, Switzerland.

doi=10.1257/jep.25.1.209

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For social scientists, evidence about how people behaved as the Titanic sunk offers a quasi-natural field experiment to explore behavior under extreme conditions of life and death. A common assumption is that in such situations, self-interested reactions will predominate and social cohesion is expected to disappear. For example, in an article called The Human Being in Disasters: A Research Perspective, Fritz and Williams (1957, p. 42) write: (Human beings) . . . panic, trampling each other and losing all concern for their fellow human beings. After panic has subsidedso the image indicatesthey turn to looting and exploitation, while the community is rent with conflict . . . Other researchers like Gray (1988) and Mawson (2007) present a similar image, while movies, television and radio programs, novels, and journalistic reports of disasters often tend to reinforce this grim scenario. However, empirical evidence on the extent to which people in the throes of a disaster react with self-regarding or with other-regarding behavior is scanty. The sinking of the Titanic posed a life-or-death situation for its passengers.1 Failure to secure a seat in a lifeboat virtually guaranteed death because the average ocean temperature was about 2 degrees Celsius (35 degrees Fahrenheit). Only a handful of swimmers were successfully rescued from the water (Subcommittee of the Committee on Commerce, 1912). Moreover, lifeboats were in short supply. The Titanic actually carried more lifeboats than required by the rules of the time, which were set by the British Board of Trade in 1894. However, those rules determined the number of lifeboats according to a ships tonnage, rather than the number of persons aboard. As a result, the Titanic carried only 20 lifeboats, which could accommodate 1,178 people, or 52 percent of the people aboard. As the Titanic began to sink, deck officers exacerbated the shortage by launching lifeboats that were partially empty. We have collected individual-level data on the passengers and crew on the Titanic, which allow us to analyze some specific questions: Did physical strength , (being male and in prime age) or social status (being a first- or second-class passenger) raise the survival chance? Was it favorable for survival to travel alone or in company? Does ones role or function (being a crew member or a passenger) affect the probability of survival? Do social norms, such as Women and children first! have any effect? Does nationality affect the chance of survival? We also explore whether the time from impact to sinking might matter by comparing the sinking of the Titanic over nearly three hours to the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, which took only 18 minutes from when the torpedo hit the ship. The answers to these questions may help us to better understand human behavior in natural disasters such as hurricanes and tsunamis, as well as in man-made accidents and

For detailed accounts of the disaster, see, for example, Lord (1955, 1986), Eaton and Haas (1994), Quinn (1999), and Ruffman (1999), as well as the Encyclopedia Titanica (http://www.encyclopedia -titanica.org/), and the information provided by RMS Titanic, Inc. (2010)which was granted salvorin-possession rights to the wreck by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginiaat their website (http://www.titanic-online.com).

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terrorist attacks.2 Indeed, this kind of study can serve as a useful supplement to the findings of laboratory and field experiments (Levitt and List, 2009; List, 2008). Such studies have taught us much about, for example, the extent to which individuals behave altruistically in helping each other in donating to charities, along with issues like the role of reciprocity and endogenous punishment (for example, Fehr, Falk, and Fischbacher, 2008; DellaVigna, 2009). But these studies seek to capture behavior under normal conditions, and it is not clear how or whether they would apply on a sinking ship in the North Atlantic Ocean.

Who Was on the Titanic? Titanic?

We have constructed a detailed dataset of 2,207 persons who were confirmed to be aboard the R.M.S. Titanic. The data were gathered from the Encyclopedia . Titanica and crosschecked with other sources.3 Summary statistics of the variables collected are reported in Table 1. This table also reports in the last column for each category the fraction that survived. All of the means in the table are shares of the people on the Titanic who fell into each categoryexcept for age, which is expressed in years. Out of 2,207 passengers and crewmembers, 1,501 people, or 68 percent, died. Based on the records, we were able to gather information about the gender, age, nationality, port where people boarded the Titanic, and ticket price, which tells us , whether the passenger traveled first-, second-, or third-class. In addition, we were able to generate individual information related to travel plans and companions. Limited information was available with regard to the cabin allocation: we were only able to find this information for 15.2 percent of passengers, and it is based on information provided by survivors, which means it is likely to include some bias. (In addition, because the Titanic hit the iceberg shortly before midnight, some of the passengers were not yet in their cabins, but elsewhere on the ship). Of the 2,207 persons onboard, the age of all but 21 individuals (four crewmembers and 17 passengers) is known. Thus, using age in the regression reduces the number of observations to 2,186 persons. Out of the 2,186 people, 1,300 were passengers and 886 were crew members. Among the passengers, 43 were servants. Additionally, of

2 In the economic literature, behavior under extreme conditions is rarely treated. Exceptions are Hirshleifers (1987) behavior under adversity, as well as studies dealing with specific events occurring in markets (Barro, 2006). Natural disasters and terrorism have found some attention, especially after Hurricane Katrina (Tavares 2004; Shugart, 2006; Kenny, 2009). Post-disaster effects have been treated more often (Dacy and Kunreuther, 1969; De Alessi, 1967; Kunreuther, 1967; Kunreuther and Slovic, 1978; Skidmore and Toya, 2002). 3 While there is some anecdotal conjecture that other people may have been aboard the Titanic as stowaways, all of the survivors were on the official passenger lists. The cross-checked resources include Beavis (2002), Bryceson (1997), Committee on Commerce (1912), Eaton and Haas (1994), Geller (1998), Howell (1999), Lord (1955), Lord (1986), NSARM (2008), Quinn (1999), Ruffman (1999), U.S. National Archives (2008), and Wreck Commissioners Court (1912).

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Table 1 Summary Statistics for the Titanic

Proportion of those on board 0.320 0.220 0.780 0.203 0.017 0.052 0.891 0.147 0.129 0.321 0.403 0.217 0.380 0.527 0.052 0.048 0.192 0.181 30.044

Variables Survived Females Males Females without children Females with children Age < 16 (children) Age 1650 First-class passengers Second-class passengers Third-class passengers Crew Traveling alone Traveling with a group England Ireland Sweden United States Other nationalities Mean age

Fraction survived

0.724 0.206 0.705 0.947 0.478 0.309 0.617 0.404 0.253 0.238 0.240 0.342 0.253 0.342 0.255 0.491 0.346

Sources: The Encyclopedia Titanica (2008) has been used as the primary source, which was crosschecked across the following resources: Beavis (2002), Bryceson (1997), Subcommittee of the Committee on Commerce (1912), Eaton and Haas (1994), Geller (1998), Howell (1999), Lord (1955), Lord (1986), NSARM (2010), Quinn (1999), Ruffman (1999), U.S. National Archives (2010), and Wreck Commissioners Court (1912). Notes: The number of observations is 2,207, except for age, where it is 2,186. Traveling with a group includes couples with and without children and/ or servants; singles with children and/or servants; and extended groups also covering friends.

the 2,186 aboard, 1,704 were male (78 percent), and 460 of the 1,300 passengers were female (35 percent). We use the United Nations standard for age, which classifies children as being less than 16 years of age. Thus, among the 2,186 people aboard, 124 were children (65 girls and 59 boys). Whether a passenger was in the company of friends and family or traveled alone has been identified by anecdotal evidence taken from family histories and known travel arrangements, ticket numbers, and cabin allocations; those passengers for whom there is no clear or known evidence were assumed to be traveling alone and were assigned as single. We have complete information on each persons country of residence (nationality). From this, we have been able to generate several variables to investigate the effects of nationality. The largest national group (53 percent) was from England, followed by the United States (19 percent).

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Who Survived?
Before undertaking this study, we would have predicted that certain groups would be more likely to survive the sinking of the Titanic: prime-age men, first-class : passengers, those traveling in company, crew members, women with children, and British subjects (because the Titanic was perceived to be a British ship). But only some of these hypotheses turned out to be correct. The descriptive statistics in Table 1 indicate high survival rates for females, first- and second-class passengers, children, and a low survival rate for individuals traveling alone or with English and Swedish nationality. (Recall that the overall survival rate was only 0.320 percent, so a survival rate greater than 0.320 is considered high.) However, this purely descriptive analysis gives information about the raw effects and not the partial effects. Multiple regressions help us to better disentangle the single effects. Table 2 presents estimates from probit regressions4 in which the dependent variable in our analysis will be whether someone survived (=1) or not (= 0). For each independent (= (= variable in each row, the top figure is the estimated coefficient, and below is statistical significance ( -value). Coefficients are not always easy to interpret in a probit (z-value). model, so we also present estimates of the marginal effects. For instance, looking at the marginal effect, we see that a marginal change in age from the average of 30 years is associated with a 0.7 percent decrease in survival.5 The estimates include an increasing number of determinants to show the extent to which the estimated coefficients are stable across different estimates. Table 2 shows that we are working with a large set of dummy variables. For example, in the equation in column 1 we report results of two dummy variables that describe the social status (ticket class) of the passengers: first class and second class. Each of these is coded 1 or 0 depending on whether or not the person is in that particular status or not. There are actually three categories of ticket status that are mutually exclusive and exhaustive: first class, second class, and third class.

Pr( y = 1 | x1, x2, . . . xk ) = ( + 1 x1 + 2 x2 + . . . + k xk ). Here y is a dummy variable indicating whether the passenger survived ( y = 1) or not ( y = 0); the variables (x1, x2, . . . xk ) are explanatory variables such as gender, age, etc.; (, 1, 2, . . . k ) are parameters to estimate; and is the cumulative standard normal distribution function. The role of , which is increasing in its argument, is to keep the probability Pr( y = 1) in the zero to one interval. A linear probability model would generate fitted probabilities that can be less than zero or greater than one. Each passenger contributes one observation on ( y, x1, x2, . . . xk ). From a sample of such observations, assumed independent, the parameters can be estimated by maximum likelihood. This is a standard probit model. 5 As usual in a probit model, the marginal effect of a continuous explanatory variable xj is interpreted Pr( y = 1 | x1, x2, . . . xk ) here through the partial derivative __ = j ( + 1x1 + 2 x2 + . . . + k xk ), xj evaluated at the means, where is the standard normal density function. Since > 0, the sign of the marginal effect is the same as the sign of coefficients j. For a discrete xj , a difference rather than a derivative is used in place of (1) (change of the dummy variable from 0 to 1). To get, for example, the marginal effect for age in the first equation in Table 2, we multiply the coefficient 0.018 with the standard normal density function, which leads to a marginal effect of 0.018 0.370 = 0.0067. In this case we first calculate the z-score for the stated probability of surviving (Pr(success) = 0.348) which is 0.391. Next we calculate the probability density function value for that z-score, which gives us the value of 0.370.

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Table 2 Determinants of the Probability of Survival on the Titanic (dependent variable: survived = 1, not = 0)
Dependent variable: Survival of: All (passengers and crew) 1.471*** 17.52 0.535 ref. group

Independent variable Female z-value marginal effect Male Female with Children z-value marginal effect Female, No Children z-value marginal effect Age z-value marginal effect Age < 16 (Children) z-value marginal effect Age 1650 z-value marginal effect Age > 50 First-class Passengers z-value marginal effect Second-class Passengers z-value marginal effect Third-class Passengers Traveling Alone z-value marginal effect Traveling with a Group England z-value marginal effect Not from England Crew z-value marginal effect Observations Probability > 2 Pseudo R 2

Passenger

Passenger

Crew

Passenger

Passenger

1.462*** 1.468*** 1.858*** 1.456*** 17.26 17.44 5.50 16.77 0.528 0.530 0.640 0.526 ref. group ref. group ref. group ref. group

ref. group 2.368*** 6.25 0.647 1.401*** 15.87 0.512

0.018*** 5.24 0.007 0.382*** 2.83 0.148 ref. group 0.807*** 3.93 0.313 0.470*** 2.99 0.161 ref. group 1.140*** 10.75 0.429 0.407*** 3.90 0.155 ref. group 0.057 0.62 0.021 ref. group 0.743*** 3.74 0.077 0.418*** 2.85 0.131 ref. group 1.117*** 10.55 0.420 0.482*** 4.41 0.18 ref. group 0.064 0.70 0.022 ref. group 0.226** 2.48 0.079 ref. group 0.671*** 5.80 0.237 2,186 0.000 0.211 0.835*** 4.00 0.323 0.492*** 3.07 0.168 ref. group 1.111*** 10.39 0.420 0.488*** 4.37 0.187 ref. group 0.051 0.55 0.019 ref. group 0.256** 2.45 0.092 ref. group

ref. group 1.303*** 1.066*** 11.34 10.62 0.485 0.403 0.462*** 0.387*** 4.37 3.74 0.177 0.148 ref. group ref. group

1,300 0.000 0.292 1,300 0.000 0.280 886 0.000 0.041 1,300 0.000 0.286

1,300 0.000 0.295

Notes: Dependent variable: Survival (value = 1). The reference groups are Male; Age > 50; Third-class Passenger; Traveling with a Group (couples with and without children and/or servants, singles with children and/or servants, and extended group also covering friends); and Not from England. *, **, *** represent statistical significance at the 10, 5, and 1% levels, respectively.

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The excluded category (third class) is the reference group, and each of the coefficients is a comparison between an included category and the reference category. To increase table readability we report all the reference groups in Table 2. Prime-Age Men In the situation of a large excess demand for places in the lifeboats, people with greater physical strength, namely people in their prime age and men, would have a physical strength advantage over older people and women in the fight for survival. The equations in columns 1 to 3 of Table 2 suggest that women both as passengers and crew members had a higher probability of survival. Women passengers had, compared to men, with age and traveling class held constant, a 53 percent higher chance of survival; it was even 64 percent higher for female crew members. The fourth column reveals that persons in prime age (16 to 50) had a 16 percent higher chance to survive than older persons, which is consistent with the thesis that physical strength was important in getting to the lifeboats. Social Status and Ticket Class The 1,316 passengers (including maids) on the Titanic were traveling as mentioned before in three different classes: 325 in first class, 285 in second class, and 706 in third class. It seems plausible that first-class passengers would be more able to secure a place on a lifeboat than people of lesser economic means. Firstclass passengers were used to giving orders to the crew, and they were better able to bargaineven offering financial rewards. They were also in closer contact with the upper echelon crewmembers: in particular, First Officer Murdoch, who commanded the loading of lifeboats on the starboard side, and Second Officer Lightoller, who did the same on the port side. Moreover, the first-class passengers had better access to information about the danger, and the lifeboats were located close to the first-class cabins. In contrast, most third-class passengers had little idea where the lifeboats were located (safety drills for passengers were introduced only after the Titanic disaster), and they did not know how to reach the upper decks where the lifeboats were stowed. Thus, it seems plausible that first-class passengers would have a higher probability of survival than second-class passengers; in turn, second-class passengers would have a higher probability of survival than third-class passengers. Results in the first and second columns of Table 2 indicate that first- and second-class passengers had a significantly better chance to survive than passengers in third class. Passengers traveling first class had a more than 40 percent higher chance, and those in second class about a 16 percent higher chance, to be saved than those in third class. Social Embeddedness Passengers traveling in the company of family and friends may be expected to have a better chance of survival in life and death situations because they are more likely to receive information indirectly and to obtain psychological and physical support from others. However, equations in columns 4, 5, and 6 in Table 2 suggest

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that it did not matter for survival whether one traveled alone or in the company of family and friends. It may be that those who were alone were able to focus more specifically on their own best interests, rather than being slowed by a group, and that this counterbalanced any benefit of traveling with a group. Function One would expect the experienced crew of 886 men and women to be better prepared for a catastrophic event than the passengers, to be informed earlier and better about the location of lifeboats and the danger of sinking, and to have closer personal contacts with the crewmembers in charge of loading the lifeboats. On the other hand, the crew has a duty to help save passengers, and they are only supposed to abandon a sinking ship when that task has been fulfilled. We expect that in life or death situations, such as that encountered on the Titanic, selfish interests tend to dominate. Indeed, the equation in column 5 of , Table 2 suggests that the members of the crew had, ceteris paribus, a 24 percent higher chance of saving themselves than did third-class passengers. Social Norms A key social norm under life and death conditions is that women and children are to be saved first. This norm may operate either through the actions of male passengers, or through the officers loading the lifeboats. Interestingly, no international maritime law requires that women and children be rescued first. However, similar norms can be found in other areas where people need to be evacuated. Humanitarian agencies often evacuate vulnerable and innocent civilians, such as women, children, and elderly people first. The Geneva Convention provides special protection and evacuation priority for pregnant women and mothers of young children (Carpenter, 2003). The results in column 6 of Table 2 suggest that this norm was indeed in force. Women in the company of children had a 65 percent higher survival chance than men, while females without children had a 51 percent higher survival chance. Focusing only on female passengers in a further specification not reported in Table 2, we find that women with children had a 19 percent higher chance of surviving than women without children. Nationality The Titanic was built in Great Britain, operated by British subjects, and manned by a British crew. Interestingly enough, the Ocean Steam Navigation Company, popularly known as the White Star line because of the white star appearing on the company flag, was under the management of the industrial giant, J.P. Morgan. Nevertheless, the public perceived the Titanic as being a British ship. Thus, it might be expected that the crew would give preference to British subjects, easily identified by their language. However, columns 4 and 5 of Table 2 reveal a quite different picture. Controlling for all other influences considered above, British passengers had between an

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8 or 9 percent lower chance of surviving the Titanic disaster than the passengers of other nationalities aboard. This may be attributed to the fact that the British behaved with a stiff upper lip, or perhaps British subjects were less likely to believe that the Titanic would sink.

The Influence of Time as a Disaster Unfolds

It took 2 hours and 40 minutes between the time the Titanic hit the iceberg and the moment the ship sank to the bottom of the sea. It can be argued that this left sufficient time for socially determined patterns of behavior, such as letting the passengers of the better classes, or women and children, to be saved first. We therefore compare the survival probabilities on the Titanic with those of another well-known shipping disaster, the sinking of the Lusitania only three years later, on May 7, 1915, as a result of a torpedo attack by a German U-boat, costing the lives of 1,313 people. It can be argued that on the Lusitania, selfish behavior prevailed, , while on the Titanic the adherence to social norms and social status dominated. This difference could be attributed to the fact that the Lusitania sank in only 18 minutes, creating a situation in which the short-run flight impulse dominates behavior. In addition, the Lusitania was sunk by violence during a time of war, which may provoke different reactions. For example, before the sailing of the Lusitania, warning notices had been printed in the leading newspapers reminding transatlantic passengers that a state of war was in effect and that any vessel traveling under the British flag was liable to come under attack and passengers sailed at their own risk. On the other hand, there are several reasonable suppositions supporting the idea that the Lusitania was not at severe risk, primarily that it was capable of speeds fast enough to outrun enemy torpedoes. In addition, the Lusitania was a vessel carrying civilian passengers, not a warship, and, it was carrying a considerable number of neutral American civilians. Maritime law states that in wartime merchant vessels must be given a warning prior to attack, whereas warships should not expect any warning. The Lusitania was never given such a warning by the attacking U-boat (Bailey, 1935). We were able to collect data containing detailed information about gender, age, and ticket price (and thus passenger-class status) for the Lusitania. Table 3 . shows that the passenger structure with respect to the share of women, age, and first-class passengers on the Titanic and the Lusitania was quite similar. In both disasters, 32 percent of the persons aboard survived. On the other hand, the survival rate with respect to gender and ticket class is substantially different. In the Lusitania, the , survival rates of women, first-class, and second-class passengers are now lower than the average survival rate. We again carried out a probit regression analysis in which the dependent variable indicates whether an individual survived the disaster (=1) or did not survive (= (= 0). Table 4 shows the estimated parameters, the significance level (indicated by z-values), and the marginal effects for the Lusitania. These estimates reveal a smaller -values), .

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Table 3 Passenger Structure on the Lusitania and the Titanic

Lusitania Variables Survived Females Males Age (years) First-class passengers Second-class passengers Third-class passengers Mean 0.326 0.261 0.739 31.570 0.149 0.307 0.189 Fraction survived Mean 0.320 0.220 0.780 30.040 0.147 0.129 0.321 Titanic Fraction survived

0.280 0.343 0.193 0.295 0.325

0.720 0.206 0.617 0.404 0.253

Sources: For the Lusitania data, The Lusitania Resource (2010) has been used as the primary source, which was crosschecked across Butler (2000), Lusitania Online (2010), OSullivan (2000), Preston (2002), Wreck Commissioners Court (1915). For sources of the data on the Titanic, refer to Table 1.

number of statistically significant determinants, suggesting that in the case of the sinking of the Lusitania random elements played a larger role than in the case of the Titanic. The results in Table 4 indeed indicate that people in their prime age (1650) had a statistically significantly higher survival rate than older people. Prime-age males had a 17 percent higher survival probability than other persons aboard. Women in their prime age had a 20 percent higher chance of survival, but not women in general. A comparison with the Titanic disaster suggests that when a disaster is perceived to be imminent, individuals in their prime age have an advantage, but not men as such (the coefficient for female is not statistically significant). Unlike the situation on the Titanic, first- and second-class passengers did not have , a significantly higher chance of survival on the Lusitania; as shown in Table 4, first; class passengers fared even worse than those in third class. The empirical analysis is consistent with the view that the effects of status (passengers traveling in higher classes have a better chance of surviving) and social norms (such as saving women and children first) depend on time. It seems that on the more slowly sinking Titanic pro-social behavior played a larger role, while more selfish conduct prevailed on the rapidly sinking Lusitania. Of course, time may not . be the only factor at work. Natural experiments based on naval disasters may well have other factors for which control variables would be useful.

Conclusions
The econometric estimates of the factors determining survival during the sinking of the Titanic produce a coherent story. However, this story is not necessarily in line with the simple model of selfish homo economicus. While people in their prime were more likely to be saved, it was womenrather than menwho had a

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Table 4 Determinants of the Survival on the Lusitania (dependent variable: survived = 1; not = 0)
Female z-value marginal effect Male Age < 16 (Children) z-value marginal effect Age > 50 Female, age 1650 z-value marginal effect Male, age 1650 z-value marginal effect First-class Passengers z-value marginal effect Second-class Passengers z-value marginal effect Third-class Passengers Observations Probability > 2 Pseudo R 2 0.064 0.33 0.022 ref. group 0.312 1.5 0.111 ref. group 0.556** 2.59 0.199 0.493** 2.42 0.166 0.384*** 3.33 0.123 0.033 0.31 0.011 ref. group 933 0 0.025

Notes: We carried out a probit regression analysis in which the dependent variable indicates whether an individual survived the disaster (=1) or did not survive (=0). For each variable, we show the estimated parameters, the significance level (indicated by z-values) and the marginal effects. Reference groups are Male, Age > 50, and Third-class Passengers. *, **, *** represent statistical significance at the 10, 5, and 1% levels, respectively.

better chance of being saved. Children also had a higher chance of surviving. At the time of the disaster, the unwritten social norm of saving women and children first seems to have been enforced. However, we do find evidence suggesting that effects predicted using the standard homo economicus model are also important. People in their prime age drowned less often than older people. Passengers with high financial means, traveling in first class, were better able to save themselves as were passengers in second class (compared to third class). Crew members who had access to better informational and relational resources managed to survive more often than others aboard. In

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contrast, the British passengers who were the same nationality as most of the crew members did not use this fact to their advantage. Differences in context are likely to matter in life-or-death situations. The comparison between the Titanic and the Lusitania suggests that when time is scarce, individual self-interested flight behavior predominates, while altruism and social norms and power through social status become more important if there is sufficient time for them to evolve. The sinking of the Titanic represents a well-documented, dramatic, life-or-death situation. However, even under these extreme situations, the behavior of human beings is not random or inexplicable, but can be explored and, at least in part, explained by economic analysis.

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