2012/07/30 by Mikael Elinder, Oscar Erixson · 1 citation
Medicine · Psychology · Health Professions · #Travel-related health issues #Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior #Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health #Disadvantage #Crew #Normative #Norm (philosophy) #Demography #Survival of the fittest #Power (physics) #History #Political science #Sociology #Law #Archaeology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1073/pnas.1207156109
openalex publication_date 2012/07/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Since the sinking of the Titanic, there has been a widespread belief that the social norm of "women and children first" (WCF) gives women a survival advantage over men in maritime disasters, and that captains and crew members give priority to passengers. We analyze a database of 18 maritime disasters spanning three centuries, covering the fate of over 15,000 individuals of more than 30 nationalities. Our results provide a unique picture of maritime disasters. Women have a distinct survival disadvantage compared with men. Captains and crew survive at a significantly higher rate than passengers. We also find that: the captain has the power to enforce normative behavior; there seems to be no association between duration of a disaster and the impact of social norms; women fare no better when they constitute a small share of the ship's complement; the length of the voyage before the disaster appears to have no impact on women's relative survival rate; the sex gap in survival rates has declined since World War I; and women have a larger disadvantage in British shipwrecks. Taken together, our findings show that human behavior in life-and-death situations is best captured by the expression "every man for himself."