Cruelty After the Storm

Three weeks ago today, Hurricane Florence launched a ton of misery on the residents of North and South Carolina. In addition to widespread destruction along our coast caused by the initial landfall, rivers in North and South Carolina rose for days, inundating roads, submerging towns, and forcing thousands of people from their homes. The latest estimate suggests that Florence inflicted over $20 billion in damage.

Watching the nonstop coverage of the disaster as it unfolded less than two hours from my home, I was struck by several psychological phenomena that involve people’s reactions to disasters, but I want to focus on one that is particularly relevant to the theme of this blog.

Source: Creative Commons CC0, courtesy Pixabay

After recounting the story of a local WalMart manager who spent over $1200 of his own money to buy supplies for families who had evacuated to storm shelters inland, a news anchor gushed about how disasters bring out the best in people. And, that’s certainly true. Many, many people give of themselves, their time, and their money – sometimes at personal risk – to help those who are in need. Many people outside the storm zone opened their homes to people fleeing the disaster area, thousands of volunteers served at shelters and food distribution centers, people went out in hazardous conditions to check on their neighbors, thousands of people converged from out-of-state to lend a hand, and even those far from the afflicted area donated a great deal of money. Many others valiantly served the public in their roles as police, firefighters, EMS workers and other medical personnel, power company employees, members of the National Guard, and public officials.

But, the picture wasn’t all rosy. Even before the storm had passed, people were looting stores and breaking into vacated homes. Immediately afterward, the state attorney general started warning residents about widespread fraud, price gouging, and scams involving fake home repair companies. Bogus “charities” started soliciting money in the name of hurricane victims. While some people were helping the storm victims at considerable cost to themselves, others were kicking the victims while they were down, selfishly profiting from others’ misery.

Source: Creative Commons CC0, courtesy Pixabay

Of course, we all know that people vary in terms of how selfish they are and in the degree to which they balance their own desires over those of other people. But I was particularly struck by the stark contrast in how people reacted to precisely the same circumstances. Some went far beyond norms and expectations to help those in need, while others stooped about as low as a person can go to heap additional misery on the victims.

Psychologists have been interested in these differences for many years, but we don’t have a really good answer to the question of why some people look at a disaster and ask “How can I help?” – while others look at the same disaster and wonder how they can exploit the situation to benefit themselves by taking advantage of people whose lives are already devastated.

The question is not so much why do people do things to benefit themselves. We all look out for ourselves and tend to put our own concerns over those of other people. And that’s fine. Evolution designed all animals to look out for themselves first. We don’t expect people to give away all of their money and possessions to help other people.

Rather, the question is why do some people disregard other people’s well-being so thoroughly that they are willing to inflict additional suffering on people who are already hurting? Clearly, the looters, price gougers, and scammers who take advantage of the victims of a disaster are abjectly selfish, uncaring, nonempathic people who lack some central feature of humanity. Unfortunately, psychological science has a very poor understanding of the causes of such behavior.

We will never stop natural disasters such as hurricanes, but if we can better understand the most pathologically selfish people among us, we might be able to reduce the damage that such people create in the aftermath of a catastrophe.