‘As you get
older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.’
Ernest Hemingway (writer)
Continuing
on the theme of how other people influence our well-being, this week’s post is
going to deal with role models, mentors and heroes. This topic has only
recently gained attention in research, but as you will see there are very good
reasons for us to actively search for people who inspire us.
There
is clearly a difference between a mentor
(a real person who gives us advice and guidance), a role model (someone who we look up to and who’s example we try to
follow) and a hero (someone we
admire for their special abilities and achievement, who has faced serious risks
and/or has overcome significant adversity, and who stayed true to their values
and principles during their ordeal). However, for the sake of simplicity, I will
use the term ‘personal hero’ in the widest sense possible in this post, to also
include the definitions of ‘mentor’ and ‘role model’ and ordinary people who
may do extraordinary things.
Our
heroes may be real people that we know personally (including family members,
friends, colleagues), non-fictional people from history or the present time
(e.g. political, social movement or spiritual leaders, explorers, survivors of
tragedy and adversity), as well as fictional characters from literature or
movies.1-3 The most common qualities that we see in heroes is that
they are smart, strong, caring,
selfless, charismatic, resilient, reliable and inspiring.2
So why are personal heroes good for our well-being?
1.
They simply make us feel
good
Whether we personally
witness an occasion of human excellence or read about it/see it in books,
magazines, film, TV or on the internet: We are often deeply moved or feel uplifted,
energized and inspired by special people of virtue who overcome adversity, who
can be trusted and who stand up for values that we believe in. This distinctive
positive emotion has also been described as ‘elevation’.1 Elevation
is a self-transcending emotion (meaning that it makes us feel being part of
something bigger than we are), which is associated with a higher level of
well-being.4
2. They can help us through specific times of struggle
This can happen in many
ways and somewhat depends on the situation:
- Resilient and emotionally healthy other people that we personally know can become our role model or mentor. Observing their calmness and equanimity in situations when we feel upset, angry or anxious can make us cope better. This effect - when the calm of one person regulates and calms down another - is called dyadic interaction.3 The dyadic interaction works through the vagus nerve and a certain area of our brain called the fusiform gyrus, which recognizes facial expressions.
- Visualizing people who support us can make us more resilient in difficult situations even if they are not directly present. For example, spiritual figures and mentors can provide us with a sense of support and acceptance, which may help us through challenging times.3
- We can also simply take people who have gone through difficult times and faced adversity as a positive example; this may give us guidance and courage when we are going through a similar situation. We can also actively try to imagine how our personal hero may react or how they would solve a problem if they would be in our situation.
3. They encourage personal growth, long-term resilience and
well-being
Acts of virtuous human
behaviour encourage us to also do our best.4 They motivate us to follow our values and to embody positive
qualities such as strength, compassion, altruism (unselfish concern for the
welfare of others), authenticity and reliability, persistence, resilience,
wisdom, courage, patience and hope.3 Many of these qualities are
pro-social and therefore likely to strengthen
our social connections with other people. As regular blog followers will
already know, good social connections have a direct positive impact on our
well-being as they represent the most important contributor to happiness.5
Other qualities such as persistence have been identified as an essential
factor for success,6 be
it in the professional world or in our hobby pursuits. In this way,
internalizing the qualities of our personal heroes and composing a ‘wiser inner
self’ can increase our internal resilience and well-being in the long run.3
4. They have a positive influence on society
Positive
leaders and spiritual figures can have a huge positive impact on a wider level,
although truly heroic leadership is rare.1,7 For example, prominent
civil rights activists (such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson
Mandela) have contributed to the well-being of others not only through their
fight for the rights of their co-citizens but also through their compassionate
attitude and commitment to peaceful means.
However,
even less well-known heroes in our private and professional lives can positively
influence the wider community, as it has been shown that pro-social behaviour perpetuates across several social connections
through dyadic interaction and emotional contagion.3,4 By being
inspired by your personal hero, you can thereby pass this positive behaviour on
to anybody you interact with, and these people in turn are more likely to
behave in a pro-social way, although this does – of course – not work with
everybody!
As
our well-being is also influenced by the conditions in the community and larger
society that we live in, personal heroes can therefore also influence our
social contacts (in our private and professional lives) which in turn is good
for us.
Can you be a hero?
According
to psychologist Dr. Philip Zimbardo the answer is definitely: Yes! Dr. Zimbardo is somebody who knows
a lot about the good, the bad and the ugly of the human psyche: he conducted
the Stanford Prison Experiment where student volunteers
were assigned to either ‘prisoner’ or ‘prison officers’ roles and which had to
be abandoned prematurely due to the overly callous behaviour of the ‘prison
officers’, and he testified as an expert witness in the trial relating to the
abuse and torture of prisoners in the Abu Ghraib American military prison in
Iraq.
Dr.
Zimbardo argues that the Gaussian bell curve can be used to illustrate the
spectrum of human behaviour: on the far edge are a few individuals who show
consistently evil behaviour or (on the other end of the extreme) consistently
pro-social and altruistic behaviour.8 The huge middle portion of the
bell curve represents most of us: ordinary everyday people, whose conduct may
be more ambiguous and may be hugely influenced by circumstances.
Evil
can be promoted by dehumanization, obedience to authority, diffusion of
responsibility, group pressure, anonymity, moral disengagement and many more.8
We may be just be ‘good’ because we have not been put in a compromising,
dangerous or seducing situation. We may stay passive and not help someone in
need due to the ‘bystander effect’, because we believe that we should not
interfere in things which are not ‘our business’, or because we fear negative
consequences for ourselves. In this way our inaction may support or even
facilitate unjust and evil behaviour of others,8,9 in line with the
statement of the Irish politician Edmund Burke who said that ‘The only thing
necessary for the triumph of evil is for the good men to do nothing.’
However, Dr. Zimbardo and
other researchers in the field of heroism argue that all of us have the potential to resist compromising situations and to
stay true to our values even if we are not ‘born heroes’.8,9 Although
social science has not been able to clearly identify what exactly prompts some people
to become active, researchers believe that it may be ‘the capacity to imagine
facing physically or socially risky situations, to struggle with the
hypothetical problems these situations generate, and to consider one’s actions
and the consequences’ which can make the difference.9 In other
words, imagining ourselves in morally challenging
situations in advance may prime us to become active when we get into such a
situation in real life.
Further information on the web:
- In this video Philip Zimbardo explains what makes a hero: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MEF8AFLt-o
- In order to empower people to find their inner hero, Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues have also launched the Heroic Imagination Project
A truly amazing person- What
can we learn from…:
As you have
probably already noticed I have many different personal heroes, and only a
fraction of them have been featured in this section so far. This time, I would
like to share a story about an ordinary person doing the extraordinary deed of
setting up a business in order to help children in care, which was send to me
by one of my lovely colleagues and blog followers:
When youth
worker David Linton learned that
foster children in the UK often have to put their possessions into black bin
bags as they are not provided with any luggage, he decided that something
needed to be done to give the children some dignity. David Linton founded Madlug,
a company producing backpacks, gym bags and suitcases, which provides a free
bag for a child in care for each sold bag. Bags for children in care can also
be directly donated over the Madlug website, and each
bag is labeled with an encouraging message. Furthermore, Madlug produces
locally in Northern Ireland in cooperation with USEL, an organization
promoting the placement of people with disabilities and health related
conditions into work.
David Linton shows that
heroic deeds do not need to be particularly noisy, astonishing or glamorous-
but that we can also inspire others and improve their lives by just deciding to
act and taking the risk of a business venture. To read more about David
Linton’s amazing project you can go to https://www.madlug.com or http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/life/features/northern-ireland-man-ensures-no-child-carries-their-life-in-a-bin-bag-35046470.html
Preview: Next week we will look into a quality, which is
closely associated with heroism but which is also important for our own private
life: courage.
References and further reading:
1. Algoe SB, Haidt
J. Witnessing excellence in action: the
‘other-praising’ emotions of elevation, gratitude, and admiration. Journal of
Positive Psychology. 2009;4(2):105-127.
2. Franco ZE, Allison ST, Kinsella EL, Kohen A, Langdon.
Heroism Research: A review of theories, methods, challenges and trends. Journal
of Humanistic Psychology. 2016; 15
pp. DOI: 10.1177/0022167816681232
3.
Graham L. Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and
Well-Being. New World Library; Novato. 2013.
4.
Fredrickson B. Positivity: Groundbreaking Research to Release Your Inner
Optimist and Thrive. Oneworld Publications; Oxford, England. 2010.
5.
Diener E, Biswas-Diener R. Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological
Wealth. Blackwell Publishing; Oxford, UK. 2008.
6.
Seligman MEP. Flourish: A New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being- and
How to Achieve Them. Nicholas Brealey Publishing; London, UK. 2011.
7.
Allison ST, Goethals GR. Hero Worship: The elevation for the human spirit.
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. 2015;46(2):187-210.
8.
Zimbardo P. What makes a hero? 2011. Retrieved from: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/what_makes_a_hero
9. Franco Z,
Zimbardo P. The banality of heroism. 2006. Retrieved from: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_banality_of_heroism
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