Emotional and behavioural reactions to tremors of the Umbria-Marche earthquake.

This is a study of 100 citizens of Fabriano, Italy, who experienced an earthquake. Results of a structured interview provide information on their emotional and behavioural reactions during and immediately after the earthquake as well as descriptions of the context. Respondents identify their coping responses during the earthquake as taking flight, freezing, taking shelter, failing to realize what was happening, reaching and protecting significant others, seeking information from the social environment, and recovering personal belongings. Moreover, in the aftermath of the earthquake, the most common responses were: evacuation, returning to houses, reuniting with family members, undertaking activities, observing the scene, recovering personal belongings, meeting in groups, and continuing activities. Respondents describe their emotional reactions as fear, helplessness, worry, and terror. Prosocial behaviour was frequent and looting did not occur. Emotional and cognitive reactions were influenced by environmental and social factors.

[1]  Igor Sotgiu,et al.  Long-Term Memory for Traumatic Events: Experiences and Emotional Reactions During the 2000 Flood in Italy , 2007, The Journal of psychology.

[2]  Norris R. Johnson,et al.  Panic and the Breakdown of Social Order: Popular Myth, Social Theory, Empirical Evidence , 1987 .

[3]  P. Ekman.  An argument for basic emotions , 1992 .

[4]  Israel Nachson,et al.  Distinctiveness in flashbulb memory: Comparative analysis of five terrorist attacks , 2004, Memory.

[5]  J. Sime.  Movement toward the Familiar , 1985 .

[6]  D. Alexander,et al.  Misconception as a Barrier to Teaching about Disasters , 2007, Prehospital and Disaster Medicine.

[7]  D. Rubin,et al.  PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Research Article CONFIDENCE, NOT CONSISTENCY, CHARACTERIZES FLASHBULB MEMORIES , 2001 .

[8]  B. Lubin,et al.  Response to Disaster: Psychosocial, Community, and Ecological Approaches , 1999 .

[9]  F. Norris.  Methods for disaster mental health research , 2006 .

[10]  E. Quarantelli,et al.  Rising to the Challenges of a Catastrophe: The Emergent and Prosocial Behavior following Hurricane Katrina , 2006 .

[11]  H. Reis,et al.  Handbook of Research Methods in Social and Personality Psychology: Author Index , 2013 .

[12]  E Winograd,et al.  Remembering the earthquake: direct experience vs. hearing the news. , 1996, Memory.

[13]  J. Leach,et al.  Why people 'freeze' in an emergency: temporal and cognitive constraints on survival responses. , 2004, Aviation, space, and environmental medicine.

[14]  J. Bohannon.  Flashbulb memories for the space shuttle disaster: A tale of two theories , 1988, Cognition.

[15]  Charles P. Smith.  Content analysis and narrative analysis. , 2000 .

[16]  S. Christianson.  Flashbulb memories: Special, but not so special , 1989, Memory & cognition.

[17]  Ulric Neisser,et al.  Phantom flashbulbs: False recollections of hearing the news about Challenger. , 1992 .

[18]  Diane Alexander,et al.  Behavior During Earthquakes: A Southern Italian Example , 1990, International Journal of Mass Emergencies & Disasters.

[19]  A. Tekcan,et al.  Autobiographical and event memory for 9/11: changes across one year , 2003 .

[20]  E. Quarantelli,et al.  Response to Social Crisis and Disaster , 1977 .

[21]  Ulric Neisser,et al.  Affect and accuracy in recall: Author index , 1992 .

[22]  N. J. Cohen,et al.  Is There a Special Flashbulb-Memory Mechanism? , 1988 .

[23]  I. Nachson,et al.  Flashbulb and factual memories: the case of Rabin's assassination , 2003 .

[24]  Joseph E LeDoux.  Emotion Circuits in the Brain , 2000 .

[25]  Andy Field,et al.  Discovering statistics using SPSS: and sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll, 3rd Edition , 2009 .