Arif Qazi / Insider
How humans behave during natural disasters
Every two minutes or so, all over the world, someone asks someone else for a small favor. Pass the salt, wipe the counter, turn on the light — the microscale transactions of daily life. No big deal, right?
A bigger deal: All over the world, almost everyone says yes. All the time. In rich countries and poor ones, urban or rural, from eastern Ghana to northern Australia and from Ecuador to Poland, people help one another out. We agree to three times as many of these fiddly little requests as we decline or ignore. It is a defining trait of us humans. We cooperate.