Handbook of Heroism and Heroic Leadership

Scott T. Allison, George R. Goethals, Roderick M. Kramer, Scott T. Allison, George R. Goethals, Roderick M. Kramer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317426103
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

Over the past decade, research and theory on heroism and heroic leadership has greatly expanded, providing new insights on heroic behavior. The Handbook of Heroism and Heroic Leadership brings together new scholarship in this burgeoning field to build an important foundation for further multidisciplinary developments. In its three parts, "Origins of Heroism, " "Types of Heroism, " and "Processes of Heroism, " distinguished social scientists and researchers explore topics such as morality, resilience, courage, empathy, meaning, altruism, spirituality, and transformation. This handbook provides a much-needed consolidation and synthesis for heroism and heroic leadership scholars and graduate students.

Part I
Origins of Heroism

1
Attributes and Applications of Heroes

A Brief History of Lay and Academic Perspectives

Elaine L. Kinsella, Timothy D. Ritchie, and Eric R. Igou

Research on heroism typically seems fascinating to people in everyday life: they ask insightful and interesting questions about the research, offer their personal reflections on heroes, and sometimes share details of significant life events triggered by the conversation. Heroism is an approachable topic that appears to influence individuals and groups in extraordinary ways. Indeed, heroes have been described as “support for all human life and the inspiration of philosophy, poetry, and the arts” and function as “a vehicle for the profoundest moral and metaphysical instruction” (Campbell, 1949, p. 257). Campbell further suggests that the metaphors by which heroes live have been “brooded upon, searched, and discussed for centuries: they have served whole societies, furthermore, as the mainstays of thought and life” (p. 256).

Scholars convey similar ideas about the ways that heroes shape and represent culture (Hegel, 1801/1975), and act as source of social control (Klapp, 1954). Other philosophers highlight hero-worship as a way to re-establish meaning and idealism (Früchtl, 2009). Not only do heroes help people to survive physical dangers, but also they can evoke eudemonistic questions of “How should I live? What do I really want?” (Früchtl, 2009). Further still, individuals may seek to achieve symbolic immortality and a meaningful existence by worshiping the lives of their heroes (Becker, 1973). In an essay entitled “What makes a life significant?” William James wrote:

What excites and interests the looker-on at life, what the romances and the statues celebrate and the grim civic monuments remind us of, is the everlasting battle of the powers of light with those darkness; with heroism, reduced to its bare chance, yet ever and anon snatching victory from the jaws of death.

(James, 1899, pp. 5–6)

These influential writings about heroes hint about the psychological importance of heroes to individuals and groups, and are suggestive of the role heroes can play in movements, institutions, political regimes, historical periods, and everyday life (Klapp, 1954). However, until very recently the associated systematic empirical investigations have been scarce in the social science literatures.

Addressing this gap, contemporary social scientists have turned their attention to finding answers to important and unanswered empirical questions about heroes, such as: What are the most essential characteristics of a hero? Why are heroes important? What psychological and social functions do heroes provide to individuals and groups? How does heroism differ from altruistic behaviors? What are the conceptual differences between heroes, leaders, and role models? In this chapter, we highlight the contribution of psychology so far to our understanding of this ancient and complex subject.

First, we briefly summarize the existing research on heroism with particular focus on the audience for heroes, and their perception of hero characteristics and influence. Second, a new model, the hero functions framework (Kinsella, Ritchie, & Igou, 2015a), is presented and the three categories of psychological functions that heroes seem to fulfill for others are discussed. Third, we outline three areas that we believe should be prioritized when planning future research. Fourth, we provide examples of how to use citizen heroes as a tool for positive change in health, well-being, rehabilitation, and education contexts.

What is a Hero?

Heroes come in many forms: some real and some fictional. The term hero derives from the Greek word heros, meaning protector or defender. Historical views of heroism emphasize the importance of nobility of purpose or principles underlying a heroic act (see Zimbardo, 2007), but definitions of heroes have changed over generations. The term hero is used on a daily basis in the media (Sullivan & Venter, 2010) and many people readily name their personal heroes (Kinsella et al., 2015a). However, the term hero has been described as “radically ambiguous” in contemporary life (Gill, 1996, p. 98). For example, heroes have been described as those who reflect societal values (Campbell, 1949; Smith, 1976), provide standards of conduct (Pretzinger, 1976; Wecter, 1941), represent an ideal self-image (Caughey, 1984), in terms of their exceptional behavior, unusual merits or attainments (Boorstin, 1987; Klapp, 1954), and acting in an altruistic or courageous way despite physical risk (Becker & Eagly, 2004).

Becker and Eagly (2004), however, were criticized for narrowing the definition of hero to exclude heroism in the service of ideas (Martens, 2005). Heroes are also described as individuals concerned with protecting and promoting the well-being of future generations (McAdams, 2008). Schwartz (2009) describes heroes as individuals who demonstrate practical wisdom, showing the desire to do good for others and the capacity to do the right thing in a particular situation.

Franco, Blau, and Zimbardo (2011) distinguish between heroism and other prosocial behaviors, such as altruism: Heroism typically involves greater levels of risk and self-sacrifice, and unlike altruism, health benefits are rarely associated with heroism due to the high levels of personal sacrifice involved. Those authors note that heroes reliably choose a challenging particular course of action even when it may be psychologically easier to exit the situation (e.g., in the case of whistleblowers and political activists), whereas bystander intervention typically involves an actor who feels they have no psychological choice but to save, rescue, or help another person in an emergency situation (see Franco et al., 2011).

A number of scholars have suggested that a common heroic ideal exists (Jung, 1969; Allison & Goethals, 2011). To examine stereotypes of heroes, researchers refocused the meaning of heroism, by examining lay conceptions of heroes; a means to understand the defining features of heroism and how the term is applied in daily life (Allison & Goethals, 2011; Kinsella et al., 2015a; Sullivan & Venter, 2010). This approach converges with some of the central goals of empirical research; namely, construct conceptualization and quantification, method and results replication, and practical applications.

The first of such studies included pilot work with children to identify the characteristics of their preferred hero characters (Gash & Conway, 1997). The 24 characteristics derived from this work were: active, beautiful, brainy, brave, brilliant, caring, confident, dresses well, famous, friendly, funny, gentle, good, good-looking, helpful, honest, important, kind, loving, loyal, rich, skillful, strong and warrior. The children named heroes who originated from diverse domains such as family, film, TV, politics, community, religion, music, sport and other broad categories. It is interesting that children selected beautiful, famous, good-looking, and rich as important features of heroism. However, perhaps it is not surprising given that fairy tales, cartoons, or movies often portray good people and heroic figures as beautiful, pretty, or attractive (Eco, 2004; Klein & Shiffman, 2006). The findings from Gash and Conway (1997) indicate that children do show some bias, such that “beautiful people are good,” or in this example, heroic. At a later developmental stage, children may develop an ability to acknowledge good and heroic behavior with less regard for a person’s physical appearance, however adults do still have a tendency to assume that beautiful people possess more socially desirable traits (Dion, Berscheid, & Walster, 1972).

In another study, students based at a Catholic university in the USA were asked to define a hero and were provided with one half of a page to write an open response. Participants’ responses were compared with six categories of hero definitions existing in the literature (see Sullivan & Venter, 2010, p. 437). Most commonly, participants defined heroes as “providing standards of conduct/being a role model” (n = 81) and “representing an ideal self-image” (n = 85). Fewer individuals defined heroes in terms of their accomplishments (n = 57), specific altruistic acts (n = 48), embodying social values (n = 16), or allowing individuals to vicariously reach new experiences (n = 1). Many persons’ responses reflected how they relate to their hero, in other words, viewing the hero as a role model or viewing the hero as an idealized version of the self.

In a second study, Sullivan and Venter (2010) requested students recruited from a Southern Baptist university in the USA. Participants were asked to identify one of their heroes and to provide reasons to explain why this person is a hero. Participants were provided with 9 blanks for them to record their reasons as well as an example: “Hero: George Washington, US President; Reasons: Honest, intelligent, great leader, brave.” Participants’ responses were coded to account for synonyms or unique phrasing, and features were compiled according to frequency of each term’s use. The results indicated that the participants described heroes as intelligent, loving, caring, talented, hardworking, a role model, creative, motivated, and religious (Sullivan & Venter, 2010). One wonders whether adults sampled from a secular setting would prioritize different hero features. The authors acknowledged that the example of George Washington may have primed participants to think and respond in a particular way, thus calling to question the validity of the list of hero features generated. The issue of using specific hero examples in research is a key methodological challenge facing hero researchers.

Allison and Goethals (2011) asked a sample of college students in the USA to list the traits that they believed described heroes. Next, a sample of students sorted the traits, identified in the first study, into groups based on how similar or different they thought the traits were to each other. Data analysis suggested eight trait clusters of heroes: smart, strong, caring, selfless, charismatic, resilient, reliable, and inspiring (the “Great Eight”; Allison & Goethals, 2011). One could argue that “loving” is an aspect of “selfless” and that “creative” is included in the “smart” category. The characteristics smart/intelligent and caring were also mentioned by Sullivan and Venter (2010), but the characteristics loving, talented, hardworking, a role model, creative, motivated, and religious did not appear in this more recent study. Given the discrepancies between the findings in the studies described above, one could wonder whether the differences were arising as a result of the different methods employed as well as the populations sampled. Further, one could ask whether non-USA and non-student samples respond similarly to the question, “what makes a hero?”

To address these questions we (Kinsella et al., 2015a) conducted seven independent studies using prototype methods, in an attempt to understand how people think about the characteristics of heroes, and to decipher how those features compare with leader and role model characteristics. The samples were drawn predominantly in Europe and the USA from community samples, online communities, and among student populations. Research on everyday social phenomena is dependent on the availability of a conceptual definition (Cronbach & Meehl, 1955). To meet this requirement, a theoretical definition must ensure rigor and coverage of the topic (Gregg, Hart, Sedikides, & Kumashiro, 2008). A method that balances both scientific rigor and captures the complexity of everyday phenomena is prototype analysis (e.g., Hassebrauck, 1997; Gregg et al., 2008). We employed this method to identify how a hero is viewed and to characterize the features that are more or less prototypical of that person.

In our studies, the first step was to generate open-ended descriptions of the characteristics of heroes and heroic behavior (Study 1, n = 189). These descriptions were later grouped together into 26 categories of hero features by independent coders to determine if such features were identical, semantically-related, or meaning-related. The second step was to identify which of these characteristics were most central to the concept of hero using a ratings scale method (Study 2, n = 365), a reaction time task (Study 3, n = 33), and a surprise recall task (Study 4, n = 25). The findings from these four studies indicate that the central features of heroes are: brave, moral integrity, conviction, courageous, self-sacrifice, protecting, honest, selfless, determined, saves others, inspiring, and helpful. Less common than the central features but frequently included peripheral features are: proactive, humble, strong, risk-taker, fearless, caring, powerful, compassionate, leadership skills, exceptional, intelligent, talented, and personable. Interestingly, the list of central and peripheral features represents characteristics that area stereotypically masculine (brave, protecting, strong, fearless) and female (helpful, selfless, caring, compassionate) which perhaps challenges a view that heroes are conceptualized in exclusively masculine terms. Next, in our Study 5 (n = 89) of that project, participants most strongly identified a hero when the target was described with central features (vs. peripheral or neutral features). The findings support the idea that people’s conceptions of heroes are matched on the basis of a cognitive construction process (Goethals & Allison, 2012).

The third stage involved teasing apart the characteristics that were most closely associated with heroes when pitted against leaders or role models using rating scales. Both Study 6 (n = 212) and Study 7 (n = 307) indicated that the prototypical or central features of heroes did not fit conceptually as well for role models and leaders. In other words, heroes were more likely to be described as brave, showing moral integrity, saving others, willing to sacrifice, altruistic, compassionate, selfless, courageous, and protecting, than leaders or role models.

Lay conceptions of heroes encompass both planned, learned, controlled heroic everyday acts, as well as heroic acts that include spontaneous, involuntary, reactive, and unplanned acts. These findings suggest that participants (aged between 18 and 73 years), sampled predominantly in Europe and the USA, were able to communicate clear conceptual differences between heroes, leaders, and role models. What is particularly noteworthy is that lay conceptions of a hero, sampled across 25 different countries, reflect its original Homeric meaning—pertaining particularly to moral integrity, bravery, and self-sac...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Introduction: Setting the Scene: The Rise and Coalescence of Heroism Science
• PART I Origins of Heroism
• 1 Attributes and Applications of Heroes: A Brief History of Lay and Academic Perspectives
• 2 Why Heroism Exists: Evolutionary Perspectives on Extreme Helping
• 3 Adaptive Foundations of Heroism: Social Heuristics Push Advantageous Everyday Ethical Behavior to Heroic Extremes
• 4 The Evolution and Neurobiology of Heroism
• 5 Character Development and the Emergence of Heroic Leadership: Towards a Relational Developmental Systems-Based Model
• 6 The Moral Character of Heroes
• 7 Why and How Groups Create Moral Heroes
• 8 The Hero Organism: Advancing the Embodiment of Heroism Thesis in the Twenty-First Century
• PART II Types of Heroism
• 9 Everyday Heroes: Determinants of Moral Courage
• 10 Heroism in Times of Crisis: Understanding Leadership during Extreme Events
• 11 Holocaust Heroes: Heroic Altruism of Non-Jewish Moral Exemplars in Nazi Europe
• 12 Heroism and Wisdom in Medicine
• 13 Deviant Heroes and Social Heroism in Everyday Life: Activists and Artists
• 14 To Become or Not to Become? Existential Courage and the Quest for Identity
• 15 Heroism in the Networked Society
• 16 A Training Program in Spiritually Oriented Leadership: Inner Growth for Outer Change
• 17 Career Development and a Sense of Calling: Contexts for Heroism
• 18 Underdogs as Heroes
• 19 Whistleblowers as Heroes: Fostering “Quiet” Heroism in Place of the Heroic Whistleblower Stereotype
• PART III Processes of Heroism
• 20 The Hero’s Transformation
• 21 Moral Transformation: The Paths to Heroism, Villainy, and Victimhood
• 22 The Impact of Heroism on Heroes and Observers: Stories of Elevation and Personal Change
• 23 Accidental and Purposeful Impediments to Heroism
• 24 Heroic Empathy: The Heart of Leadership
• 25 Heroic Leaders and Despotic Tyrants: How Power and Status Shape Leadership
• 26 The Intersection of Purpose and Heroism: A Study of Exemplars
• 27 Heroism and the Pursuit of Meaning
• 28 Psychopathy and Heroism: Unresolved Questions and Future Directions
• 29 The Courage of One’s Moral Convictions: Exploring the Two Sides of Heroism
• Index