Christopher Shea, Altrusim; Every Man for Himself! Wall Street Journal, May 19, 2012 (in his column titled Week in Ideas)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 10613087073528.html
("The idea that chivalry is the norm has been shaped by the story of the Titanic--apparently an outlier")
Note:
(a) For "Every Man for Himself," see
The Devil take the hindmost. The phrase Finder, undated.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/358400.html
("The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations lists 'Every man for himself and the Devil take the hindmost' as an 'early 16th century' proverb")
(b) The commentary was based on
Mikael Elinder and Oscar Erixson, Every Man for Himself! Gender, norms, and survival in maritime disasters. Research Institute of Industrial Economics, Apr 2, 2012 ("IFN Working Paper No 913, [year] 2012")
http://www.ifn.se/BinaryLoader.a ... ;FileName=Wp913.pdf
(abstract: "Since the sinking of the Titanic, there has been a widespread belief that the social norm of ‘women and children first’ gives women a survival advantage over men in maritime disasters, and that captains and crew 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 new picture of maritime disasters. Women have a distinct survival disadvantage compared to 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, that the gender gap in survival rates has declined, that women have a larger disadvantage in British shipwrecks, and that there seems to be no association between duration of a disaster and the impact of social norms. Taken together, our findings show that behavior in life-and-death situation is best captured by the expression ‘Every man for himself’")
(c) Research Institute of Industrial Economics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Res ... ndustrial_Economics
(acronym: IFN; based in Stockholm, Sweden)
The official website states
(i) that it is a private, non-profit research institute, and
(ii) that in 2006 the institute changed its name to the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (Institutet för Näringslivsforskning, IFN).
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