But it seems at least fairly common for people not to react to fire alarms. Here are a recent month’s tweets on the topic:
These might be people not responding to fire alarm drills. In my university dorm there were recurring fire alarm drills, in which authorities would set the fire alarm off even though there was no real fire (so that students could practice what to do in the case of a real fire). For some of these tweets (e.g. “Howard girls ignoring the Quad fire alarm every day”), fire alarms might be weak evidence of an actual fire.
On a related note, I found but did not read a paper titled “Why Building Occupants Ignore Fire Alarms.” I found this paper from Elicit’s response to “How often do people ignore fire alarms when they are with other people?” Notably, this query did not return any replications of the 1968 original paper; and AFAICT from your post, there are indeed no peer-reviewed replications—this might be worth mentioning?
These might be people not responding to fire alarm drills. In my university dorm there were recurring fire alarm drills, in which authorities would set the fire alarm off even though there was no real fire (so that students could practice what to do in the case of a real fire). For some of these tweets (e.g. “Howard girls ignoring the Quad fire alarm every day”), fire alarms might be weak evidence of an actual fire.
On a related note, I found but did not read a paper titled “Why Building Occupants Ignore Fire Alarms.” I found this paper from Elicit’s response to “How often do people ignore fire alarms when they are with other people?” Notably, this query did not return any replications of the 1968 original paper; and AFAICT from your post, there are indeed no peer-reviewed replications—this might be worth mentioning?