All posts by Scott Allison

About Scott Allison

Scott Allison has authored numerous books, including 'Heroes' and 'Heroic Leadership'. He is Professor of Psychology at the University of Richmond where he has published extensively on heroism and leadership. His other books include Reel Heroes, Conceptions of Leadership, Frontiers in Spiritual Leadership, and the Handbook of Heroism. His work has appeared in USA Today, National Public Radio, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Slate Magazine, MSNBC, CBS, Psychology Today, and the Christian Science Monitor. He has received Richmond's Distinguished Educator Award and the Virginia Council of Higher Education's Outstanding Faculty Award.

Harriet Tubman: The Hero Who Fought Slavery

Activist Heroes, Legendary Heroes

By Mary Hampton, Kelsey Donner, & Jessica Partlow

In 1820, Harriet Tubman, born Araminta Ross, was born into a family of slaves in Maryland. Several of her siblings were sold by their owners and she never saw them again. Harriet spent countless hours laboring for others. Along with doing manual work for her owners, she had to put up with numerous beatings, one in particular that split her skull open and never healed, causing severe brain damage. She never received any medical attention and the trauma resulted in epileptic seizures and narcolepsy for the rest of her life. Her resentment and anger at her circumstances steadily grew, particularly after she was threatened with being sold, fueling her passion to escape and bring others along with her.

Harriet was called to be a freedom hero. In 1849, Harriet became ill once again as a result of her head injury. Her value as a slave was diminishing and her owners were attempting to sell her. Soon afterward, one of her owners died and it became likely that her family would be split up and sold to different owners to settle his estate. Harriet decided she would not be sold again so she fled to Pennsylvania through the Underground Railroad. She successfully avoided slave catchers by traveling at night and seeking the protection of abolitionists.

She had not been in free territory for long when she heard that her niece was going to be sold. Tubman decided to go back to slave territory to save her niece and her children. She selflessly wanted to help others and she would risk her life in doing so.

In December of 1850, Tubman made the bold and dangerous decision to return south. Risking her own re-enslavement, she courageously embarked on the first of many journeys to set her people free. On her first trip she brought her niece and family to the north by the same route she escaped by.

A few months later she returned for her own brother and was well on her way to earning the nickname “the Moses” of her people. In over a decade she made 19 trips to the south and back, rescuing over 300 slaves. Slave owners in the south never knew there was one person behind the escape of so many slaves, but other abolitionists did.

She worked with many abolitionists like Thomas Garrett, Frederick Douglass, John Brown and William Lloyd Garrison.  Douglass and Brown both counted Tubman among the bravest and most important anti-slavery heroes of the day. Tubman successfully led slaves to freedom for nearly a decade without ever being discovered or losing a single passenger on her “underground railroad.” She was a valued activist and spoke publicly to abolitionists while taking care of her relatives and fighting her illness.

When the Civil War began Harriet first served as a nurse before adopting a more active role by helping map terrain for the Union Army and even leading armed assaults. When slaves were liberated from captured Confederate Territory she helped to recruit them to the Union Army.

Despite her incredible work and dedication to the Union, Harriet was never compensated and the U.S. government did not properly recognize her service until nearly 40 years later. The fact that she never received compensation combined with her role as caretaker for her family and rescued slaves meant that she was in a perpetual state of poverty. Despite the constant difficulties she faced with her health, her finances and the total lack of recognition, Harriet never stopped working to help other people.

Harriet Tubman showed great heroism during her journey from slavery to freedom to liberator. Her life was not easy and her experience of belittlement and hardship persisted even into the 20th century. Even though she was oppressed herself in being a disabled, uneducated, black, former slave woman, she navigated physical, social and political danger for the sake of freedom. She received some recognition for all of her many achievements, including her work in the suffragette movement.  She pursued her vision unswervingly and by the end of her life, Tubman was widely known and finally received the respect she deserved. After her death she has become widely recognized as one of the most important American heroes and activists for the end of slavery and civil rights for former slaves, African-Americans, and women.

– – – – – –

Mary Hampton, Kelsey Donner, & Jessica Partlow are undergraduate students at the University of Richmond. They wrote this essay as part of their course requirement while enrolled in Dr. Scott Allison’s Social Psychology class.

My Sister, the Quiet Hero

Unsung Heroes

By Scott T. Allison

Recently, my sister Sheree passed away from stomach cancer at the age of 57.

On the surface, Sheree was no different from many people. She had a husband and two children, lived in suburbia, owned some pets, played the guitar, and loved to tinker with her home decor and yard.

But for those who knew Sheree and loved her, there was much more below the surface. She was a hero in her own quiet way.

Heroism is tough to define, but most people would agree that heroism involves improving the lives of others in significant ways. It is love and compassion put into action. Here’s one story that shows how, even at a very young age, my sister Sheree had great heroic instincts.

Back in the 1960s, we lived in a lower-middle class neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The houses in this neighborhood were packed very close together. The five of us – my father, mother, brother, Sheree, and me – lived in a small 800 square-foot home. Literally within an arm’s reach of our porch was the home of our neighbor, a woman named Irene.

Irene was a cranky, middle-aged widow with red hair and a terrible singing voice. We knew about the bad voice because she lived alone and entertained herself with loud singing. On warm summer evenings, with all the windows open in the hopes of catching an occasional breeze, we’d also catch that unmistakable singing. And to call it singing was generous. It was more like the screeching of a wounded owl.

The crankiness of Irene would be on full display any time the three of us kids ventured onto her property. We were very young kids who liked to play ball and go exploring, and so needless to say we’d stray into her yard now and then either out of carelessness or to retrieve a lost ball. When Irene saw us violating her space, she’d yell at us to get out. And much to my mother’s horror, her shouts would include a few choice swear words to boot.

None of us liked Irene, and we did our best to steer clear of her. But there were many times when we’d be shouted at, and the only comfort we took was that at least it momentarily stopped her from singing.

One day after one of Irene’s tirades, Sheree did something extraordinary. She was only five years old at the time, a sweet thing with blonde hair, deep blue eyes, and an endearing smile. She also had the instincts of a saint.

Sheree had just been on the receiving end of one of Irene’s outbursts. She ran home to escape our neighbor’s rant. But rather than stay home, she decided to go outside and pick as many wildflowers as she could. She gathered them into a beautiful bouquet and then walked up to Irene’s front door and knocked. When Irene opened the door, Sheree handed her the flowers and apologized.

And Irene was forever changed.

Obviously touched by Sheree’s kindness, Irene never yelled at us again. In fact, she became a friend to the family.  Sheree’s simple act of reaching out with love and generosity had transformed Irene into a kind, neighborly soul.

Irene’s loud and horrid singing continued, however.

Sheree’s kind gesture to Irene pretty much sums up the way she lived her life. She always went out of her way to show kindness to others, including me. Last September, after she had surgery to remove her stomach, she was very weak and in the hospital for almost a month. Yet she still found time to mail me a birthday card with her shaky handwriting wishing me well. I’ve kept the card and will always treasure it.

She died just two days after Christmas. Despite being in pain and obviously in a terribly weakened state, she still mailed me a Christmas gift just days before her passing.

There are other aspects to Sheree’s heroism, too many to describe here. She was an Art Docent in her local elementary school, teaching kids about art and famous artists, as well as tutoring and leading or participating in after-school reading programs. She took in stray animals. She reached out to people, and touched them with her smile, her heart, and her contagious laugh.

Irene was one of many whose heart was forever changed by Sheree. I count myself among this group, too.

Thank you, dear sister. I love you and miss you.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

John F. Kennedy: The Peace President?

Political Heroes

By George R. Goethals

A great deal has been written and spoken about the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated over 50 years ago in November of 1963.  While nobody who was sentient at the time is likely to misremember Kennedy’s assassination – or the funeral that followed it, or the killing of his assassin on national television – recollections of Kennedy’s presidency are not so pure.  Human memory is imperfect in many ways.  At best, it is selective.  Much worse, memory is prey to numerous biases, errors and distortions.

In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Mark Antony said at Caesar’s funeral, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”  One wonders whether the opposite is true in Kennedy’s case.  People are generally aware of both good and bad aspects of the Kennedy years, but memory of the good seems to win out.  On the positive side are his charismatic persona, inspirational rhetoric and ambitious agendas.  The negatives include philandering, passivity on some crucial issues and deception about his health.  All of these and numerous other aspects of his administration are debated endlessly.

But there is one aspect of JFK’s presidency that has received too little attention.  Kennedy felt that the Limited Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union, signed in August and ratified in September of 1963 outlawing nuclear tests in the atmosphere, was one of the most far-reaching accomplishments of his administration.  In a commencement address at American University in June of that summer, sometimes called the “Strategy of Peace” speech, Kennedy outlined the possibility of a completely new relationship with Russians, moving beyond the Cold War and its tensions and standoffs.

That speech and the test ban treaty were part of his evolving reexamination of super power relations.  As a result, the word “détente” entered the American political vocabulary during the last weeks of the Kennedy administration, although it did not become widely used until the Nixon and Ford eras in the 1970s.  Kennedy’s initiatives suggested what was possible for other willing presidents to achieve by way of reducing tensions with our Communist adversaries.

Kennedy had seen war himself and had seen men under his command die.  He also had seen the United States and the Soviet Union come far too close to nuclear annihilation.  He wanted very much to find ways to move beyond the Cold War and nuclear confrontation.  His hard-line National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy once quipped to an aide that there were only two pacifists in the White House, “You and Kennedy.”

But Kennedy was no pacifist.  He would have fully endorsed the Ronald Reagan/George H. W. Bush mantra that “peace through strength works.” But he was committed to building what would later be called a “new world order.”  In his last months he consulted with Russian diplomats about joint ventures in space.  He also came to believe that further American involvement in Viet Nam would never sustain the South Vietnamese regime.  He announced the redeployment of 1,000 military advisers from that country.

Although the question is one of those persistent unknowns, it seems most probable that the full-scale American war in Viet Nam would not have happened in a second Kennedy term.  More generally, it seems safe to imagine that the world would have been very different had Kennedy not been assassinated.  His intelligence and what psychologists call “openness,” that is, curiosity and broad interest in ideas and feelings, enabled him to grow and become ever more realistically flexible.  These are personal qualities that almost always serve leaders well.

In the decade after Kennedy’s assassination, some held that within a generation JFK largely would be forgotten, remembered, if at all, as a young and promising president who served for a short time with mixed results.  It was foreseen by few then that he would capture the country’s attention with unprecedented focus in the year 2013.  But memory, both individual and collective, works in unpredictable ways.

Images of Kennedy are pervasive and forever forged in our memories. We hear his voice, see him smile, listen to his banter with reporters and his speeches and comments on matters both large and small.  After five decades, it may be time to organize our own recollections and what we have learned as we grasp an unforgettable American original.

We might start with remembering what he said at American University:  “For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet.  We all breathe the same air.  We all cherish our children’s future.”

– – – – – – – – – – – –

Dr. George R. Goethals holds the Robins Professorship in Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond’s Jepson School of Leadership Studies

Andrew Jackson: Hero by Popular Opinion

Political Heroes

By Jesse Schultz

On the surface the 7th President of the United States seems ready made for the mantle of hero. He was born into poverty from Irish immigrant parents in 1767, fought briefly in the American Revolution, studied law and became the prosecuting attorney for western North Carolina, elected to the House of Representatives in 1796, and later the Senate the very next year in 1797. He even served in the state supreme court.

He rose to fame during the War of 1812 when he soundly defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans using a remarkably egalitarian force of slaves, Haitians, Choctaw, French pirates, Canary Islanders, and frontiersmen. The press declared him a hero and dubbed him “Old Hickory”. He went on to serve as Governor of the newly acquired Territory of Florida. He ran for President in 1824, winning the popular vote but losing the Electoral College. He ran again in 1828 and won and 4 years later won reelection. Andrew Jackson seemed to live a life that, had it been the product of some work of fiction, would seem almost too much to believe. Certainly a hero.

But…

There was another side to Andrew Jackson. He was a man who engaged in duels, killing Charles Dickinson in 1806. During in the First Seminole War he inflicted harsh discipline on his troops, including executions for mutiny. The necessity of some were questioned. Later he would capture two British subjects, Robert Ambrister and Alexander Arbuthnot, and believing them to be agents sent to supply the Seminoles Jackson had them tried and executed. The questionable aspects of the Arbuthnot-Ambrister Incident, which included the invasion of Spanish Territory, would see Jackson investigated by Congress. While Congress would find “fault” with Jackson’s handling of the trial and execution, they would not take any action against Jackson.

And as President Jackson would oversee one of the more shameful moments in American history. In 1830 he signed the Indian Removal Act which called for the forcible removal of Native Americans from their lands. The Cherokee Nation would actually take their fight to the Federal Court in an attempt keep their lands and in Worcester v Georgia The Supreme Court ruled against the relocation. Of the ruling Jackson would reputedly say “John Marshall (the chief justice at the time) has made his decision; now let him enforce it!”. There’s been dispute on whether Jackson in fact uttered those words, but unfortunately they did seem to sum up his attitude. While the Cherokee would not be removed till the Van Buren Administration, the Choctaw, Seminoles, and Creek would see removal under Jackson’s watch.

But none of this seems to have affected Jackson’s popularity, which only increased. After his death his image would appear on no less than 13 postage stamps, have numerous memorials, counties, and cities named after him, his image is on the $20 bill and has been on numerous other denominations over the years. In a 2009 C-SPAN Survey of Presidential Leadership, historians placed him at 13th.

So was Andrew Jackson a hero for his leadership during his Presidency? A villain for his actions? Both? Neither? This is why the notion of what is a “hero” is so nebulous. Public and historic consensus focused on his actions in the War of 1812, or his handling of the Nullification Crisis, or simply his stellar political career. The darker aspects of his persona are ignored or excused. Jackson certainly wouldn’t be a hero to Native Americans, or the British, or the Spanish. To this day we face these questions when declaring heroes. Do the person’s admirable qualities outweigh the frailty of the human condition? Who decides?

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

The author, Jesse Schultz, routinely has a few $20 bills in his back pocket which he happily sits on.

Heroes in the Movies: Five Myths That Need Busting

Commentary and Analysis,

By Scott T. Allison

For the past several months, I’ve been reviewing movies with my good friend Greg Smith at our Reel Heroes website.  Our reviews focus not only on the quality of a movie but also on the quality of the hero and the hero story within the movie.  It’s been great fun, and I’ve gotten a lot out of it, particularly a love for those cookie-dough bites that our local theater sells.

We’ve reviewed about 35 movies and I’m noticing some interesting trends.  Yes, I’ve been going to movies my whole life and have always enjoyed good movies and good hero stories.  But writing these reviews has sensitized me to story details and character analysis.  Whereas I used to sit in the theater, mindlessly munching on popcorn, now I’m sitting there with my cookie-dough bites actually thinking about the various characters, the functions they serve, and whether their actions are consistent with current theory and research on heroes.

So are movie heroes good heroes?

The conclusions I’m reaching are not terribly encouraging.  Granted, it’s the summer blockbuster season and Greg assures me that the movie studios are saving their best films for the fall and winter seasons.  Still, as we watch each movie, I’m asking myself, “Well, that was fun, but didn’t we just see this same movie last week?”  It’s true that the names of the characters are different, and the costumes they’re wearing are different.  But these summer movies are becoming almost interchangeable.

I have no doubt that the makers of Hollywood films are smart people.  The problem isn’t with their intelligence, or with the effort put into film-making.  In fact, the effort is astounding.  There is no shortage of breathtaking scenes and scenery in today’s movies.  The CGI effects are simply jaw-dropping.  And at the end, during the film credits, hundreds and hundreds of people’s names scroll down.  Each film is an amazing collective effort.

The problem, I suspect, is that filmmakers’ goals are somewhat askew.  Instead of aiming to produce great movies with great hero stories, they aim to make movies that make money. Armed with tried-and-true formulae and professional script doctors, movie studios will only invest vast sums of money into films that aim low and then invariably hit that mark.

Movie-makers appear to worship at the altar of five myths about heroes:

1) The bigger the muscles, the better the hero.  Maybe I’m just envious, especially in light of my cookie-dough bite obsession, but Hugh Jackman is now “Huge” Jackman.  Dwayne Johnson isn’t a rock, he’s a continent.  Apparently, heroism doesn’t involve selflessness and self-sacrifice.  It’s more about being able to lift enormous amounts of weight in the gym.  Look how superheroes have evolved into muscle-bound freaks.  Christopher Reeve’s Superman is downright anorexic compared to Henry Cavill’s rendition.

2) The more times a hero fights the villain, the better the hero.  The great comparative mythologist, Joseph Campbell, identified a pattern in the structure of the classic hero story from his observation of thousands of ancient hero myths.  Yes, in a good hero story there is a fateful encounter with a villain.  No, these encounters do not need to continue ad infinitum.

3) Heroes’ bones are unbreakable.  In almost every movie, we see heroes surviving several hundred-foot falls, impossibly violent collisions, and fiery bomb blasts.  Movie heroes get clobbered by steel beams, leap off speeding trains, and are punched senseless by bad guys.  Yet they suffer nary a scratch.

4) The longer the story, the better the hero.  Hollywood filmmakers are epic-philes who fail to realize that after two hours, most audiences are done.  Finished.  We don’t need two and a half or three hour-long marathons.  My cookie-dough bites just don’t last that long.

5) Heroes are only male.  Over 90% of the movies we’ve reviewed feature a male hero. The Heat, The Call, and Epic were exceptions to the rule.  Apparently, when the emphasis is on muscles and fighting, women don’t fit the bill.  How sad that the movies industry has virtually blacklisted women from heroic roles.

– – – – –

Earlier this year, Greg and I watched a delightful movie called Mud that runs only two hours and garnered a meager $20 million at the box office –- chump change compared to the hundreds of millions earned by Iron Man 3, Man of Steel, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Fast & Furious 6.

None of the characters in Mud has huge muscles. There aren’t endless fight scenes or constant explosions or dramatic falls from great distances.  Instead, we meet a young boy who tries to help a mysterious stranger, and who falls in love with a young girl.  Both of these relationships cause him pain and he is forced to grow emotionally.

This is hardly exciting stuff if you worship at the altar of the five myths above.  But as of mid-July, Mud is the best movie of the year.  The hero of the story does the right thing and discovers his missing inner qualities that help him rise above adversity.

In the movies, we need more Muds and fewer duds.

– – – – – – – –

Why Scientists Who Study Good and Evil Are Vulnerable To Criticism

Commentary and Analysis, ,

By Scott T. Allison

Roy Baumeister, an eminent professor of psychology at Florida State University, has spent much of his professional life studying the causes of evil.  Last year he published an article in which he lamented a problem with approaching evil from a scientific standpoint: “Social scientists are not supposed to let their values cloud their judgment, because doing so can impede the impartial search for truth,” he said.  Yet when scientists remain impartial about evil, they are often criticized for seeming to condone it.

Scientists who study evil attempt to understand perpetrators’ motives and attitudes, and while doing so, scientists may begin viewing evil actions as less atrocious than how others judge them.  After all, those who commit evil do not regard their actions as evil. And so understanding an evil-doer’s mindset may diminish (even slightly) the scientist’s beliefs about the evilness of the perpetrator’s actions. According to Baumeister, scientists who study evil “carry the moral risk of mitigating their condemnation of some of the worst things that human beings do.”

Baumeister concludes that “if we as social scientists restrict our focus to actions that everyone, including the perpetrator, agrees are evil, we will have almost nothing to study.  It is therefore necessary to define evil as in the eye of the beholder.”  In short, evil must be defined in a way that is “not strongly tethered to objective reality.”

In my studies of heroism, I’ve encountered a similar issue.  There isn’t as much consensus about what defines a hero as one would think.  Most people agree that heroes perform great actions, but one observer’s idea of a great action may be very different from that of another observer.  Just as evil-doers dismiss the idea that they are evil-doers, heroes themselves often dismiss the idea that they are heroes.  As such, my co-author George Goethals and I have adopted a view of heroism that is identical to that of Baumeister’s definition of evil:  It’s in the eye of the beholder.

This definition is very unsatisfying to people who claim to know the objective definition of heroism.  Goethals and I have asked hundreds of people to list their heroes and our position is that it’s not our place, as social scientists, to judge people as “wrong”.  If tennis players report that tennis great Roger Federer is their hero, we are not going to tell them they are mistaken.  If aspiring actresses list Meryl Streep as their hero, we will report it without condemning their judgment.  Our goal is to try to understand their reasoning behind their choices.

Can I, or should I, instruct my daughter about what a hero is from my own personal perspective?  Yes.  In my role as a father, I should probably share my values about heroic action with my child.  But as a social scientist, I just report the results of our surveys and try to make sense of them.  In doing so, I know I open myself up for criticism.

I may believe that athletic prowess is not especially heroic, but that won’t stop me from reporting what people say when asked who their heroes are.  Goethals and I believe that people’s beliefs about heroes, however misguided they may or may not be, are worth studying from a scientific perspective.

People have very different ideas about who society’s heroes are.  My goal isn’t to support or refute their choices, but merely to explain them.  People believe their heroes are either highly moral, highly competent, or both.  Some people believe that heroism requires a lifetime of self-sacrifice; others believe that one self-sacrificing action is sufficient for heroism.  Opinions vary widely.  But we have found some common patterns.  For example, people tend to believe that heroes possess many or all of The Great Eight traits of heroes:  smart, strong, caring, reliable, resilient, selfless, charismatic, and inspiring. 

Here’s some encouraging news for people who don’t like many of the individuals that people list as their heroes:  Goethals and I have found that as people get older, they become more discriminating in their choice of heroes.  People tend to outgrow celebrity  and sports heroes who only show signs of competence but not much morality.  In our 2012 article and in our Heroic Leadership book, we call heroes whom we outgrow transitional heroes.  We’ve found that as people get older, they are less likely to list LeBron James, Roger Federer, or Meryl Streep as heroes. They are more likely to list Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., or Wesley Autrey, the New York subway hero who threw himself on the train tracks to save the life of a complete stranger.

As a social scientist who should remain objective about my reporting of heroes, I shouldn’t express my opinion about the natural maturation process leading people to place greater weight on morality than on competence when choosing heroes.  But I can’t resist saying I’m glad to hear it.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –