On "Black Friday", the day after Thanksgiving, a Wal-Mart temporary employee was trampled to death after opening the store doors at 5:00am in New York. Can game theory help explain why shoppers just continued rushing into the store, some even stepping over the man?
Psychologists have developed the term "diffusion of responsibility", which may help to explain this "insanity". Specifically, diffusion of responsibility basically states that most coming in that morning knew the man needed help, but they figured someone else would aid the man. Surely, if there had been just one or two shoppers, they would have stopped and helped the man up. However, given the vast crowd, people assumed someone else would help the man. This would allow the individuals in the crowd that didnt stop to help the chance to get great prices on DVD players and toys, and also get the benefit of someone else helping the man to his feet and thereby saving his life. However, no one stopped to help, which is in line with the diffusion of responsibility idea -- the larger the crowd the less likely any one individual is to take action.
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