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More than 160 people were killed in a fire in the Beverly Hills Supper Club near Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1977, an incident that appeared to be a classic case of panic involving a breakdown of social order and ruthless competition for exits. This paper analyzes transcripts of police interviews with club patrons to describe flight from the show room in which most of the deaths occurred. The descriptive analysis reveals that escape from the building was initially orderly and non-competitive; however, when escape became urgent, competition for the remaining exit possibilities developed. Even then the behavior did not appear to be in total disregard of social order; social norms and structural ties continued to constrain behavior.

Data from the risky shift literature are brought to bear on collective behavior. The author suggests that the extreme behavior common in collective behavior is parallel to the shift to risk in small groups decision making, and that both phenomena can be conceptualized as group‐induced shifts to an extreme.

The availability of television in a community affects political information, but it is family politicization that is at the root of the causal chain to political interest, media use and political information.

The effect of the local & nat'l pol'al climates on the party choice of HSch students was studied. Previous res had shown that both affected the extent to which youth identified with the party of their parents. That res had been during a period when the nat'l pol'al climate was Republican. The present res was conducted during a nat'l Democratic admin. All seniors in 6 Ru HSch's made up the pop. The communities were selected in order to represent a strong Democratic majority, a strong Republican majority, & a competitive situation. The S's, through a self-admin'ed j, reported their own pol'al party choice, & their parents' party choice. The data indicate that the stronger the majority party, the greater the proportion of the youth who identify with their parents' party, if their parents are in the majority party. Conversely, the weaker the minority party, the less the proportion of children of minority party parents who identify with their parents' party. This confirmed the effect of the local pol'al climate. An effect of nat'l pol'al climate was not evident. The Republican party, even during a nat'l Democratic admin, attracted more new party members than did the Democratic party. This was interpreted as the effect of aspirations for SM. AA.

An investigation of listening ability in 13 visually impaired college students was conducted. Subjects were pre-tested on a listening skills test and then exposed to three modes of speech presentation in a counterbalance order: normal speech, accelerated speech, and compressed speech. Results showed a consistent and significant trend towards better performance on the accelerated over the normal mode, and on the compressed over both the accelerated and normal modes.

We clarify a theoretical conceptualization of panic as a collective phenomenon, develop an operational measure of the concept, and offer a way of contrasting differences across collectivities (rather than among individuals) in order to determine if a panic as a collective action occurred. We illustrate our way of contrasting differences by using data from the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire of 1977, examining the proportions surviving of different social categories present in the Cabaret Room, where most of the deaths occurred. There is no evidence that a complete breakdown of these norms—a panic—occurred. We conclude that the evacuation of the Cabaret Room was dominated by a set of norms and role obligations consistent with the typical social order in which the (socially-defined) weak get help from the (socially-defined) strong, such as women helped by men.