Three young Americans – Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos and Spencer Stone – successfully tackled a gunman on a train in France, saving passengers.
The journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna reported on Ukrainian citizens held unlawfully by Russia; she was captured and died in detention in Russia.
Welles Crowther, often known as the “man in the red bandana,” was a 24-year-old equities trader who guided numerous people in the South Tower on 9/11 to safety before ultimately dying when the tower collapsed.
All of these people are clearly heroes. They engaged in courageous behavior – and risked physical peril – to benefit others or in service of a broader moral cause.
Psychologists like me describe heroes as people who take some type of intentional action to help other people, even when they may experience a personal cost for doing so. As Stanford psychology professor Phil Zimbardo put it, heroism involves taking a personal risk for the common good.
In some cases, people who take these risks experience potentially negative social consequences such as disapproval, ostracism and career setbacks. I describe people who show moral courage, meaning they are willing to speak up even when they may incur such costs, as moral rebels. Moral rebels are willing to take actions like tell a bully to cut it out, call out a friend who uses a racist slur, or report a colleague who engages in corporate fraud.
But when people think about heroism, they often focus on physical courage, such as jumping into a frozen pond to rescue a drowning child, leaping onto subway tracks to help someone who has fallen, or grabbing a gun from a shooter. What enables someone to engage in this type of physically risky – even life-threatening – behavior?
The characteristics of a hero
People tend to think of heroes as having particular traits: fearlessness, bravery, strength and altruism, along with selflessness, wisdom and resilience. Does the empirical research match up with that common conception?
Researchers in one study compared personality traits among three different groups of non-Jewish adults who lived during the time of the Holocaust: those who had rescued at least one Jewish person, those who had provided no help, and those who left Europe before the start of World War II. Their findings provide clear evidence that heroes stand out in important ways.
People who risked their own lives to help Jewish people scored higher on risk-taking, meaning they felt more comfortable with danger. They also scored higher on independence and perceived control; they felt comfortable making a decision and then taking action. They also rated higher in traits expressing concern about others, including altruism, empathy and social responsibility.
