It would be nice to think that we are all capable of great moral courage, that inside even the most unassuming person is a hero waiting to spring forth. It would be nice, but is it true?
It depends on how you define hero, according to a paper published in the Journal of Personality. The authors interviewed 50 people who had been given an award for heroism along with a control group of 50 award-less folks. The idea was to see whether there is a trait or set of traits that is common to people who won the heroism award and whether those traits are lacking in those of us whose only trophy features a little gold guy bowling.
A note about the heroes: Half of them had been given an award for one-time moral bravery, like saving a stranger from a burning house, while the other half had been given an award for long-term service, like volunteering in a hospital. This turns out to be a crucial distinction because, according to the study, many of those who had committed a single heroic act tended not to be much different from the control group. For instance, here’s what a guy who really did save someone from a burning building had to say:
… he was another human being and if there was a chance of helping him, then, you know, what the heck, why not? That was really it, nothing, not a lot of premeditation; when something like that happens, you run and grab things as quick as you can.
Commendable, for sure, but not exactly a fleshed-out philosophy. And personality tests showed this person, whom the article calls Carl, to be unremarkable. However, those who had demonstrated moral bravery over a long period of time—like the nurse who regularly comforted grieving families after they lost a loved one—scored unusually high on personality traits like nurturance. Others had firm principles that they tried to live by, like “do one good deed daily” and “live a life that has some meaning.”
The upshot is that while most of us are capable of one-time heroic actions, the people who are consistently heroic appear to have either some special personality ingredients or are guided by a philosophy that requires them to behave heroically. What this study, and previous studies, failed to find was a single characteristic that all extraordinarily moral people share. There is no hero gene.
Of course defining heroism is made tougher by how loosely the term is used. You can be a guitar hero by playing a video game. According to an article I saw, making your own popsicles qualifies you to be a “mom hero.” If a lifetime of moral bravery and freezing flavored water receive the same label then maybe it’s the word itself that needs saving.
(The full paper, “Varieties of Moral Personality: Beyond the Banality of Heroism,” is not available for free, but you can read the abstract here. The authors are Lawrence J. Walker, Jeremy A. Frimer, and William L. Dunlop.)
7 Responses to Is Everyone Superman?
22063319 - June 8, 2010 at 4:24 pm
Gosh, I prefer the glass-half-full view of these findings — even we ordinary people have a shot at saving someone from a burning building if the opportunity arises.
victorl - June 8, 2010 at 4:56 pm
People who are nurturing over an extended period of time are found, after psychological testing and personality profiling, to have high nurturing characteristics? The banality may not be in the heroism, but in the study.
mbelvadi - June 9, 2010 at 7:05 am
Apparently our vocabulary lacks sufficient breadth of ways to describe people who are exceptionally good citizens. Someone who risks their own life and safety to save someone else, especially if the someone else is a stranger, is a hero in my mental dictionary. Someone who spends a lifetime helping others in a safe nurturing environment, doing Good Works but not actually risking their own life, is a Great and Wonderful Person, but not a hero. It’s the people defining a lifetime of volunteer work as “heroism” that are sucking the meaning out of the word. Bill Gates will probably save far more lives with his financial donations towards solving major world diseases like malaria than any of these individual volunteers ever could – does that make him a hero?
spc09lib - June 9, 2010 at 10:09 am
Yes, I believe the philanthropic endeavors of Bill Gates makes him a hero. No one could or did force him to make these donations and there are any number of people with large amounts of money (most not with Gates level money I will grant you) who do not seem to spend any of it on helping others or in any other way improving life.By the way, a hospital is hardly a safe nurturing environment nor is being there day after day (whether as a volunteer or paid nurse) an easy or safe (mentally or physically) lifestyle.
mbelvadi - June 9, 2010 at 11:36 am
spc09lib: one of the problems with the language that I was trying to point out but maybe didn’t articulate well is that we don’t have words that are *comparable to* but *different from* “hero” to describe great people. I didn’t mean the hospital volunteer’s work was in any way *less than* heroic, nor even Bill Gates’ willingness to do so much more than other super-rich people, just that “hero” isn’t really the right word. But if everyone perceives that the label “hero” is some kind of unique pinnacle, that anything else must perforce be *less than*, then I guess we’re stuck with losing the “risks life and limb” connotation that hero used to have.
swish - June 9, 2010 at 11:53 am
I agree with mbelvadi that social service doesn’t qualify as heroism. But I don’t think it’s necessary to risk one’s life or safety either. I’d say the action just needs to be “gutsy” (as well as beneficial). Speaking out publicly about an injustice or evil at the risk of one’s reputation or livelihood could qualify.
rick1952 - June 9, 2010 at 12:20 pm
While the definition of “hero” is probably one that is, to borrow a phrase, “in the eye of the beholder”, this study shows that we have the capacity to put others’ needs ahead of our own whether it is during a one-time, emergency or as part of a long-term commitment. That is encouraging information, whatever term we choose to use to identify that behavior.In addition to searching for the “magic personality characteristic” that might be possessed by those considered heroes, we might also examine on how our social environment encourages or discourages us from engaging in heroic or altruistic behavior. There is data that indicates that the environments we create, the behavior we witness and even the messages we give and receive can shape our behavior powerfully (e.g., classic studies like Milgram’s and Zimbardo’s show the dark side of environmental influence on human behavior; social norms data and commercial advertising show the power of messages to influence behavior.)So, what helps to make those who are nurturing, nurturing, or heroic, heroic? I suspect further study will point to “nature being nurtured” as seems to be true with so much of human behavior.