Need-Based Heroism: The Motivation to Assign Heroic Status to Others 1 Need-Based Heroism: The Motivation to Assign Heroic Status to Others Senior Honors Thesis

This study was looking to determine whether people are more likely to look for heroic qualities in others in an emergency situation where a hero is needed, compared to a situation where nothing is wrong. This study also sought to find whether strangers in non-emergency situations will be seen as more villainous and more threatening than strangers in emergency situations. The hypotheses were supported. Participants found an ambiguous stranger to be more heroic in an emergency scenario, compared to a nonemergency. Additionally, in the situation where no hero was needed, the participants found an ambiguous stranger more threatening than in a situation where a hero was needed. Need-Based Heroism: The Motivation to Assign Heroic Status to Others 3 Need-Based Heroism: The Motivation to Assign Heroic Status to Others People need heroes and role models (Allison & Goethals, 2011). It has been argued that in every human being exists the potential to develop kindness or cruelty, through the desire to achieve universal human needs. The fulfillment or frustration of these needs can lead to the development of positive or hostile behavior, which can in turn lead to perceived heroism or villainy (Miller 2005). Research in psychology has shown that children, in particular, need positive role models in their lives as part of their normal, healthy development (Sternheimer, 2006). Heroes are influential in the adoption of healthy lifestyles, life goals, and appropriate behavior. Numerous studies have shown that children who grow up with healthy adult heroes are more likely to achieve positive life outcomes such as acquiring good jobs, entering healthy marriages, and living longer lives (Goethals & Allison, 2012). At the same time, influences by villains can have adverse effects. Allison and Goethals (2011) conveyed that humans have mental lists, models, or images of heroes and villains that we may be born with, and that also are influenced by the real and fictional people and stories that we encounter throughout our lives. They compiled a list of the “Great Eight” traits that people most regularly attribute to heroessmart, strong, selfless, caring, charismatic, resilient, reliable, and inspiring. People tend to deem those characters heroes who best fit these qualities and this concept (Allison & Goethals, 2011). Characterizing villains is often more challenging, and people are more hesitant to label figures as villains. Villain attribution depends on people’s views of morality, and there are different beliefs such as moral nihilism, moral relativism, and moral Need-Based Heroism: The Motivation to Assign Heroic Status to Others 4 universalism. Nihilism is the idea that there is no such thing as good or bad. Relativism is that people’s judgments of morality are culturally based, and universalism is that there are some values that are common across cultures (Allison & Goethals, 2011). Depending on where people’s morality beliefs fall, they may be more or less likely to consider different figures heroes or villains. Goethals and Allison (2012) established “seven paradoxes of heroism” which related to ironies in their findings about how we perceive and construct the category of heroes. One paradox conveys that “we don’t choose our heroes; they choose us,” meaning that humans may be wired with universal hero structures, which provide a basis for the qualities we look for in heroes, and whom we consider heroes. Another paradox is that we love the heroes most when they are gone. This paradox reflects the deathpositivity bias, in which people are more likely to attribute heroic qualities to people once they have passed away, conveying an idea that we internalize their memory in a more positive way than when they were actually alive. This finding could influence different historical figures and the degree to which society perceives them to be heroic or villainous. Becker and Eagly (2004) defined heroism as actions undertaken to help others, despite the possibility that they may result in the helper’s death or injury. Taken more generally, heroism may also be perceived as actions to help others that may put the helper at some sort of risk or negative outcome. Becker and Eagly (2004) studied perceived gender differences in heroes, partially based on culturally held attitudes throughout history. Early creation myths of Western cultures included both male and female deities. The reasoning behind this hero duality is that many of the early myths centered on heroic Need-Based Heroism: The Motivation to Assign Heroic Status to Others 5 figures who brought fourth humans and who endowed humans with the wisdom and ability to cope with their environments. As women are associated with procreation, it is understandable that the early myths featured both men and women as heroic figures. With the development of monotheism, the idea of multiple deities vastly diminished. These changes in religion in conjunction with chivalric code altered the focus of heroism onto ideals of male behavior to convey courageous service to others (Hearnshaw, 1928; Keen, 1984). Now, the accepted idea of heroism is that it consists of a combination of risk taking and service to a socially accepted goal (Becker & Eagly, 2004). As certain traits are considered to be heroic, Williams and Best (1990) conducted a cross-cultural study of gender stereotypes and found that the traits of daring, adventurous and courageous were associated more with men than with women in all 25 nations that they surveyed. Becker and Eagly (2004) analyzed the heroic contributions of men and women throughout different events, including rescuing Jews during the Holocaust, living kidney donors, and volunteering in the Peace Corps and Doctors of the World. When examining gender differences, Becker and Eagly (2004) found that holocaust rescuers were an equal representation of men and women. This type of heroism is extremely risky because the holocaust rescuers faced execution if caught. Further, in situations that involved physical risk but little risk of dying, women more often were heroes. These situations included donating a kidney to a person with renal disease, volunteering for the Peace Corps, and volunteering overseas with Doctors of the World. Heroism represented by women evidently is seen in many diverse areas. Therefore, it is important to consider that both Need-Based Heroism: The Motivation to Assign Heroic Status to Others 6 men and women can be heroes if given more opportunities in social roles, and that both men and women should be considered when researching heroism. There are different ways of reacting to an emergency situation, or a crisis. Weick (1988) described crises as low probability and high consequence events that threaten the most fundamental goals of an organization. Because they are not likely to happen often, these events defy interpretations and impose severe demands on making sense of the event and on decision-making. Ever since the infamous murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964, when allegedly multiple neighbors heard her in distress and did nothing to help, multiple studies have examined the bystander effect, and what are the circumstances under which bystanders are more or less likely to help someone in need. Schwartz and Gottlieb (1976) discussed “evaluation apprehension,” the idea that the presence of others may make the bystander apprehensive about reacting to the situation, regarding others’ expectations and evaluations of their behavior, which may prompt as well as inhibit helping. Schwartz and Gottlieb (1980) found that in response to a crisis, bystanders who were anonymous were significantly slower to respond than known bystanders. Their study was also the first to convey the idea of “diffusion of responsibility,” where an individual is less likely to respond to an event if there are others present, and assumes that others are responsible for action or have already acted. These findings indicate that others can influence how a person responds in a situation that could require acts of heroism. Unconscious thoughts could also have an impact on our judgments and actions in an emergency situation. Malcolm Gladwell discussed the immediate judgments of our Need-Based Heroism: The Motivation to Assign Heroic Status to Others 7 thoughts in “unconscious reasoning” in his book “Blink” (Gladwell, 2005). Gladwell argues that human instincts are often more accurate than qualitative analyses taking place over a long period of time. People engage in “thin slicing,” which entails noting certain aspects of a person, or conversation, to make it easier to form conclusions more quickly. For example, he used the example of a trained consultant was able to predict married couples’ likelihood of getting divorced from a brief conversation between the couple. Further, Gladwell suggests that the subconscious looks for subtle, small cues while enabling the conscious to work on the problem at hand, the general issue. He cites the Implicit Association Test, that people generally have associations between two subjects and may not even be aware that they do. He cited the “Warren Harding error,” the public’s election of Warren Harding based off of implicit traits that were associated with being successful or presidential: he was tall, dark and handsome. The public subconsciously attributed these qualities to a good president, and elected Warren Harding as president even though he was not particularly successful or intelligent, and did not accomplish very much during his years in office. Greenwald, McGhee, and Schwartz (1998) investigated the assumption regarding the implicit association test, that associations can be distinguished by “mapping two discrimination tasks alternately onto a single pair of responses.” They confirmed the idea, as participants were more successful when associating compatible categories than non-compatible categories. Performance was consistently superior when the categories of flowers and musical instruments were paired with positive-meaning words as opposed to negative words, as flowers and musical instruments are more often given positive associations. Need-Based Heroism: The Motivation to Assign Heroic Status to Others 8 Wilson, Lindsey, and Schooler (2000) argued that people may have dual attitudes toward objects, one implicit and one explicit. Supporting this argument, Karpinski and Hilton (2001) found that correlations between the implicit association test and explicit attitude measures were low, and that the two measures predicted different aspects of behavior. These findings support Greenwald and Banaji’s (1995) suggestion that implicit attitudes shape people’s automatic reactions and their subsequent interactions with the objects. It is important to further study heroism in emergency situations, and how people respond to these situations. Based on the findings about the bystander effect, bystanders may note certain attributes when determining if others will respond to the situation. They also may implicitly attribute heroic qualities to bystanders who may be about to intervene. Very little research has been conducted addressing the question of whether people will more likely attribute qualities of heroes to a stranger if they are motivated in some way to find a hero. It is hypothesized than in an emergency situation where a hero is needed, that people will be more likely to attribute qualities characteristic of heroes to an ambiguous stranger, compared to in a situation where no hero is needed. It is also hypothesized that in an emergency situation, that people will implicitly associate the figure with words connected to the concept of heroism, and will answer the word completion as “brave” and “help” compared to other words not connected to heroism. STUDY 1 Method Participants Need-Based Heroism: The Motivation to Assign Heroic Status to Others 9 Participants were college students in an introductory-level psychology course at a small, private university in Virginia. They received credit in their course for completing the study. The signed a consent form informing them that the study was about social perception, and indicating that all of their responses would be kept confidential and only be reported in group form. Measures There were two scenarios, each with an experimental and control condition. Participants were randomly assigned to either experimental or control conditions for both scenarios, and completed both the short questionnaires for both scenarios. Half of the participants read one scenario first, and half read the other scenario first. The questionnaires were on a Likert scale from 1 to 7. One scenario involved a situation of driving down a highway. In the control condition, the subject stops to take pictures by the side of the road, and a pickup truck approaches. In the experimental scenario, the car breaks down and the subject must pull over to the side of the road and wait for help, and then a pickup truck approaches. The other scenario involved a commute to work on a subway platform. In the control condition, the scene is typical and nothing bad happens, when a stranger approaches. In the experimental condition, a mugging takes place on the platform, and the person who was mugged is yelling for help, when the stranger approaches. After reading the scenario, the participant answered a series of questions about the stranger, and how likely the stranger was to be a hero. The participant also did a word completion of a word that was said to be on the stranger’s sweatshirt. In the car scenario, it was ““HEL__” and in the subway scenario it was “BRA__.” Need-Based Heroism: The Motivation to Assign Heroic Status to Others 10