Reading the Languages of Crowds: Crowd Control Across Cultures

The purpose of this Phase II is to develop training in the decision skills needed to control crowds of non-western cultures. In Phase I, military and civilian crowd control experts were interviewed with the Critical Decision Method to uncover crowd control challenges, strategies, and factors, as well as cues for reading crowds of U.S. origin. This provided an initial basis for understanding the decision-making requirements for crowd control and yielded initial results on cultural differences in crowds. The Phase II will build on these results by investigating crowd behavior and crowd control in non-western countries. The empirical results will inform the development of decision making exercises (DMXs) for training decision skills. The exercises will be evaluated in terms of acceptability, usability, and transfer of learning across cultural scenarios.