10-80-10 Theory

[Spartan300]

I was doing a little reading on survivors a few days ago and came across a study called the Theory of 10-80-10. In every survivor situation there are those who have a mindset to survive and those who simply panic or surrender. There are folks who actually are more "prone to dying" than others. The difference in the folks that survive and the folks that die is all about the engineering system called your brain! After examining countless disasters and categorizing the ways people respond to life threatening situations, they came up with the Theory of 10-80-10

The first 10%: These are the folks that will handle a crisis in a relatively calm and rational state of mind. The top 10 percent are true survivors. They know how to pull themselves together quickly. They can asses the situation clearly. Their decision making is sharp and focused. These are the folks that can develop priorities, make plans, and take appropriate action. The first 10% can keep their emotions in check so they can think and solve problems. They refuse to let themselves get overwhelmed. Psychologists call this process "splitting" and it's common among people who keep their cool under the greatest stress.

The 80%: This is the group most folks fall under. The vast majority of people you know are in this category. In a crisis, this group will very simply act "stunned and bewildered" like a deer in the headlights. Reasoning is significantly impaired and thinking becomes difficult. These people behave in a reflexive, almost automatic mechanical manner. Under tremendous pressure, these folks will feel lethargic and numb, will sweat, and feel sick, with hearts racing. Most folks will look straight ahead, will barely hear people around them, many times losing sense and sight of what is going on around them, experiencing tunnel vision. In short, most people when in a crisis turn into statues in the first moments of a crisis. It's okay and not necessarily fatal, but can't last very long in order to survive! The key is to recover quickly from this "brain-lock", shake off the shock, and figure out what to do!

The last 10%: This is the group you want to avoid in an emergency. Simply put, the members in this group do the wrong thing. They behave in a manner that is counterproductive to anything you are doing to survive. They make a bad situation worse. They are the ones that lose control of themselves, and just "freak out" to the point that they can't pull themselves together. These hysterical people are normally the ones that will not come out of the crisis alive, plain and simple.

I thought it was a great theory actually, I have known people in all 3 groups. What group are you in? Have you witnessed a crisis and know a person that is clearly in the first or last group?
__________________

[hunter63]

Most everything could be plotted on a "bell chart", your 10-80-10.......
Look around at people at work, at school,, jsut the way it is.

Just by virtue of being here on this forum, probably puts most of us in the top 10 percent.

[Rick]

I have always believed those those numbers although I've never seen a study to support them. As Hunter said that's just the way people act every day. A crisis only amplifies it. Generally a few surprises but pretty darn close.

[WY21lmb]

The 10-80-10 and bell curve ideas fit well with my experience. I have never been in combat (or anything similar) but I have been in way more life threatening situations at work than I care to remember. Oil refining in a plant that had some equipment and controls that dated from as far back as the 1930's tends to do that. A very few operators were calm and methodical, most of the operators at one time or another literally froze stiff (so scared their legs hurt to move them), and there were a few operators who for everyone's safety it would have been best it there had been time to lock them up in a bathroom or someplace.

[crashdive123]

I tend to agree with those numbers as a snapshot of the general population. I also believe that certain segments, or careers that train to overcome the 80 and bottom 10 is very possible. Police, EMT, Firefighters and Military are a few that come to mind. I can say for a certainty that onboard Submarines it was probably more like 90-10-0 as I'm sure it is in other similar segments. If you were in the bottom 10 statistic you were weeded out during training and sent to the surface fleet.

[BENESSE]

Seems like a reasonable assumption.
If you're in the top 10, dealing with the 80 on a daily basis can be a pita. Driving and getting lost. Working on a project with a tight deadline. Being sick. On and on. The bottom 10 are so dangerous that they can often pull some of the rest down with them. It would be a tough call--helping them or running the other way.

[mwshadow]

I can see this at my job. Unfortunately executive decisions are generally made by the 80% group.

[Old Professor]

I believe that those percentages are correct and that I fit into the first percentage group - those who remain calm and think things through before acting. Over the years I have been involved in a few critical situations where life or serious injury was facing me and my first thought was "Oh S**T, I DID IT AGAIN!" Then I think about how to get myself out of the situation and then go about it. I believe that my training as an EMT and my experience in an ambulance service and a rescue squad have served me well and developed my self confidence in coping with crisis situations. I highly reccommend taking EMT training or First Responder training. I am also a Wilderness First Aid Instructor. I realize that not everyone is psychologically suited to do that kind of work - basically the other 90%, but if you can handle sytress, these are great skill to have if the SHTF!

[finallyME]

Classic bell curve. Couldn't agree more.

[Rick]

Surface fleet. That's funny.

I really believe folks are just hard wired the way they are. It' genetics. I don't blame them. Some folks you expect to perform well under stress don't while the ones you expect to fail step up to the plate. It's interesting to me that we somehow equate size to be a better performer. Small guys aren't expected to do well and the big guys the heroes. Often it's just the opposite.

[Aurelius95]

This topic was just discussed in the book, The Survivor's Club for our book club at work. Has nothing to do with our type of work (we sometimes choose books outside of our work). It's a good book, and the author illustrates the 10-80-10 rule in detail.

[Wildthang]

Well if you get rid of the bottom 10% of the people that just cant handle stress or extreme challenges, I think that a large majority of the middle 80% is in that group because of unfamiliarity, no experience, and no training. If you take those people and get them out into the woods and train them in at least the basics, and train them in responding calmly to an emergency, they would then begin to rise into the top 10%.
In my opinion the top 10% are people that are natural born survivors and decision makers that have the inate ability to remain calm, such as most of the people here. I really doubt if the average person in the lower 2 categories ever have a thought about survival and managing crisis. They go through life thinking that nothing will ever happen to them, and have no interest in survival skills. It is not because they cant survive, it is because they are no even remotely mentally prepared for even the smallest crisis.

[kyratshooter]

I see three terms being used over and over in this discussion; Theory, assumption and bell curve.

First, this is a theory. No documentation to prove it.

Second, that makes it an assumption, and you know the definition of that word.

Third, as a teacher I worked on the bell curve theory all my life. What is being done here is not a "bell curve". What is being doen here is placing people in their own little box so they can be classified and disposed of and written off as unsavable, therefore not to be worried over.

Inside that 80% of the bell curve you have some of the lower level A students, all the B and C students and a few of the high D scores. You have as many Fs as you do As.

Yes it is the 80% of the bell curve that makes the world run. The high As are not the average and neither are the Fs. And the average is just that, it is the mid point, there is only ONE average student in a classroom.

Situation, training, learning rate and personal motivation will detirmine who survives, not a bell curve position. Some of the 80% will become A students within moments in a stress setting. Some of the High A students will curl up in the fetal position and sob uncontrolably.

Take the American mountain man, a superior survivor by any standard. Just remember that 4 out of 5 of the mountain men retruned to civilization after their first year and never returned to the wilderness. Of those that returned 80% did not live for another 5 years. What happened to the ones that survived a career in the mountains? ( a fraction of a percent of the total American population at the time) They wound up as advisors to the settlers that followed. They became trade post operators, wagon train guides and Army scouts.

Or your pioneer forefathers. In Nashville TN 250 men stepped off the flatboats in the first migration wave. All of them were already respected and seasoned wilderness survivors. One year latter 50% of them were dead. What happened to the survivors? They built a city, made their fortunes and had streets, villiages and occasional universities named after them. Their decendents still run that city, and the entire state, from behind the scenes.

Thing is, you do not know where you fall on the curve until the balloon bursts. You have preps, you have gear, you go out and "practice survival", but just like combat, you do not know what you are going to do once the shells start falling and the bullets start whizzing past you ears, not until you have been there. and the guy you never expected to be a positive preformer may be the one that shines.

Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then.

[Daniel Nighteyes]

Most everything could be plotted on a "bell chart", your 10-80-10.......
Look around at people at work, at school,, jsut the way it is.

Just by virtue of being here on this forum, probably puts most of us in the top 10 percent.

My thoughts exactly. "10-80-10" is close enough to a classic bell curve, where the "middle group" is about 68%, and the groups on each side of the middle are about 14% each. Then there are the two extreme groups, of about 2% each, that bring the total to 100%

[Daniel Nighteyes]

And the average is just that, it is the mid point, there is only ONE average student in a classroom.

Not to be TOO picky, kyratshooter, but what you described is the median, not the average (aka mean). There are three measures of "central tendency" -- the Mean or average, the Median, and the Mode. They are similar, but they are by no means the same thing.

The Median is the score or value that falls at the midpoint, or exact center, of the range, meaning that there are an equal number of scores/values on either side of it. Even then, and particularly in large populations, there can be more than one incidence (or result or person, or...) with the same score/value. Sometimes the Mean and Median are identical; sometimes they are not. I can give an example if necessary.

Regards,

-- Daniel (who suffered through countless painful hours of learning, using, interpreting and defending statistics) Nighteyes

[Rick]

Rick (who has suffered through countless painful hours of learning and avoiding statistics at all cost)

[Sarge47]

Interesting. I've always maintained that the survival kit you always have on you is your brain. Going along with what Crash wrote I do know that there is a problem, sometimes, when rescuing a drowning person when they panic. There is the danger that they will take you under with them, and, unless they've changed it, you were told to find away to restrain them. Submariners and scuba divers are taught to have rigid discipline in an underwater survival situation. I don't know for sure about the 10-80-10 rule, but I do know that proper training and discipline should work for helping those in the 80% stay focused and be helpful. I've read where a group starting to panic have been brought under control by a strong-willed, trained, leader.

Those in the last 10% can serve as "long pig."

[Daniel Nighteyes]

Rick (who has suffered through countless painful hours of learning and avoiding statistics at all cost)

[Rick]

Statistically speaking of course.

[Daniel Nighteyes]

... I do know that there is a problem, sometimes, when rescuing a drowning person... there is the danger that they will take you under with them, and, unless they've changed it, you were told to find away to restrain them.

Actually I was taught (and was taught to teach, and actually practiced) that, in this circumstance, if you cannot get them under control, to just back off and wait until they'd tired themselves out to the point of exhaustion. At that point they're relatively easy to handle/rescue.

I've read where a group starting to panic have been brought under control by a strong-willed, trained, leader.

Generally speaking, the practical, real-world research backs you up on this. The problem comes when this strong-willed leader is quite charismatic, but untrained (etc.).