Psychologists caution, though, against being too quick to judge. That guy in front of you who enters the subway — then stops dead and looks at his phone? He probably is a jerk. That passenger reaching for the bag with his favorite sweater or maybe a present for his kid? He’s probably just acting human.

Decisions made in moments of intense emotion are often the least rational, said Debra Borys, a forensic and clinical psychologist in Los Angeles. And it surely does not get more intense than it was for the passengers on Aeroflot Flight 1492 last Sunday.

“They’re feeling so utterly terrified and powerless,” Dr. Borys said.

It may also not be quite accurate, she said, to view the passengers’ actions as a conscious choice. “I don’t think we should think of it as a decision when they grab their stuff,” she said. “I think we should think about it as an impulse.” The goal may not have been safeguarding possessions; they may simply have been seeking a little emotional comfort.

A newly minted expert on how people on a burning plane behave made a similar point.

“I don’t know how the mind works in these situations,” Mikhail Savchenko, an Aeroflot passenger who took a video after escaping the plane that showed people carrying luggage, wrote on Facebook. “It’s a question for experts. It’s possible that many simply snap, and go on automatic. I don’t know.”

Watching from the safety of your phone, as an armchair disaster observer, it’s easy to think you would never act so unwisely, but grabbing for possessions is more common than one might think. Passengers who have just deplaned via an escape slide have often been seen wheeling luggage away from the scene — as if their aircraft had just sidled into the gate and their only concern was finding the nearest Starbucks.