France has one of the world’s largest maritime areas, hence it is directly affected by tsunami risks, including its coast cities as the city of Nice.
Tsunamis are considered to be the most destructive natural disaster for people and their properties. Because those cataclysms are extreme situations and affect a lot of people at the same time, individuals will have no control.. This situation will result in a feeling of powerlessness and will require major adaptation resources.
We assume in this study that individuals will perceive and assess the situation collectively and therefore react in the same way.
Face to such a brutal and uncertain phenomenon, some behaviors appear to be appropriate but others don’t because they are not the reactions expected and recommended by the authorities.
A disaster like a tsunami causes individual and/or collective behaviors that break with everyday behavior. It leads to a state of intense stress due to the sudden and unpredictable change of the environment.
Researchers have noticed that behaviors differ depending on the area in the disaster. Within the impact zone individuals would adopt behaviors such as inhibition, stupor, prostration or panic. These panic behaviors are fearful because they are difficult to stop once began and emerge through imitation processes.
Imitation refers to the act of imitating something or someone and to the artificial reproduction of an object, behavior or movement of a person or an animal. Thornidike was one of the first authors to study this phenomenon in 1898. He defined imitation as the learning process of an action by seeing it done.
Wallon made a distinction between true imitation and mimicry. The true imitation would be a reproduction of the exact succession of gestures composing an action while mimicry would contribute to the creation of social bonds between individuals.
Imitation is not limited to the identical behavior reproduction but also includes the reproduction of emotions and intentions.
The kind of imitation is not the same depending on the situation. When the objective is to achieve an effect on the physical environment, imitation is a strategy to learn new actions and skills. However, when the purpose is to achieve a social effect, imitation is a mean to communicate.
Imitation has a fundamental role in early childhood learning and socialization.
For Piaget (1994), imitation referred to the act which allows a model to be reproduced. He explained that symbolic thought is born through imitation and that the human being possesses an innate capacity for imitation.
Bandura (1980) postulated that the subject’s behavior is determined by the surrounding environment added to socializing agents and that, in this idea, imitation facilitates learning of new behaviors.
Festinger (1954) asserted that imitation increases individual performance and reduces differences and divergences between group members to ensure greater uniformity.
For Asch, the group influence didn’t come from its members but from its unanimity. The more unanimous the group is, the more sensitive the subjects will be to the group’s pressure.
This study tries to determine if an imitation behavior emerges during a tsunami. It seems very difficult to really observe individuals’ behavior and particularly imitation’s role during a tsunami because of its unpredictability and its dangerousness. Moreover, for obvious ethical reasons, it is impossible to place individuals face of a tsunami to observe their behavior. That is why we decided to use Virtual Reality to observe individuals’ behavior.
In order to examine the conditions needed for the emergence of imitation behavior during a tsunami, we have presented an experimental research which links the effect of an unanimous group on the individual with the tendency for one individual to adopt the point of view of others.
We have formulated the general hypothesis that an individual would imitate and use the behavior of others around him during a tsunami as a resource and a landmark in the environment.
To observe this imitation process, participants have been placed under two experimental conditions. In the first one the subject is surrounded by avatars who react to the tsunami by a homogeneous and ordered behavior. In the second one, he will be put in the presence of avatars who react with an individual behavior of panic.
Our study’s results didn’t show any link between the collective reactions at the evacuation time (experimental conditions 1 or 2) and the share of imitation by the subject.
The post-test interviews have also shown that less than half of the participants have followed avatars to find their way out. The majority nevertheless took in consideration the behavior of avatars to understand the emergency of the situation.
This experience has some limitations. One of the most important is that people in the department of Loire-Atlantique are used to powerful waves when they are on the beach. That’s why their behavioral reaction may not be the same than those of the habitants of Nice who are not used to see this kind of waves in the Mediterranean Sea.
In conclusion, this study shows that other individuals appear to be a reference point for the subject during a tsunami. We can also presume that individuals will potentially imitate others’ behavior to find an exit solution if they have to face an imminent danger. Further research should be undertaken to investigate the characteristics will make an individual more imitate than another.
Keywords : imitation – mimicry – behavior – tsunami – risks