In this post, I describe how two core motives of human social behavior—the need for understanding and the need for control—shape people’s responses to disaster. Using the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 as an example, I describe how people seek to maintain meaning (related to understanding) and to re-establish certainty (related to control) after unforeseen disasters.
People are sense-making creatures in a world that does not always make sense. This is a problem – although we prefer our world and environment to be orderly and predictable, and an expanding body of research shows that we do not like randomness and a lack of control over life’s outcomes (Kay, Gaucher, Napier, Callan, & Laurin, 2008; Lerner, 1980), our world and our social environment are far from perfectly orderly and controlled.
Issue