Lessons from 9/11: How conversations can galvanize others to act

This is an interesting piece from Knowledge@Emory about an article submitted to the journal Organisational Science , by Monica Worline and Ryan Quinn. The article describes how conversations can create a space for people to take courageous action - and even overcome the "Kitty Genovese effect". The key conclusion is: "people do things in conversations with others that create psychological resources that allow them to act in difficult situations".

The article looks at the behaviour of passengers aboard Flight 93, and what spurred them to take action. The authors point out that it was in fact unusual for the passengers to take any action at all - because up until then passengers in a hijacked aircraft were just seen as passive "pawns". The critical factor in the passengers taking action was their engagement in conversation beforehand. The article contends that one of the main ways conversation helped the passengers was to make the uncertainty of the situation manageable:

"In the end, it is not entirely clear that everyone knew or believed the plane was going down. There was debate aboard the plane about whether it was a suicide hijacking or not. The passengers ultimately decided that it was worth an attempt to take control of the plane and try to land it, despite the uncertainty, notes Worline. “In the Kitty Genovese case there also was uncertainty about what exactly was happening, which tended to paralyze people and stop them from taking action to address the situation. In our paper, we show that interpersonal dynamics and conversational resources made the uncertainty manageable enough so that the passengers could act.""