{"id":2252,"date":"2012-09-12T06:49:04","date_gmt":"2012-09-12T10:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/?p=2252"},"modified":"2012-09-10T17:46:44","modified_gmt":"2012-09-10T21:46:44","slug":"personal-versus-cultural-heroes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/2012\/09\/12\/personal-versus-cultural-heroes\/","title":{"rendered":"Personal versus Cultural Heroes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>By Scott T. Allison and George R. Goethals<\/strong><\/p>\n

When you think of specific heroes, what people come to mind?\u00a0 In our initial survey of people\u2019s heroes, we would often get two different kinds of answers to this question.\u00a0 Some people would list the names of their parents, teachers, coaches, and other individuals close to them.\u00a0 But other people would list the names of some of the classic heroes that every American learns about in school: Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and other legendary figures.<\/p>\n

Why two different lists?\u00a0 It turns out that how you word the survey question makes a big difference.\u00a0 We discovered that when you ask people to \u201clist your heroes,\u201d they list their family members and mentors.\u00a0 But when you ask people to \u201clist the names of heroes,\u201d they list the more famous, larger-than-life, cultural heroes.\u00a0 Apparently, we have two separate mental reservoirs of heroes, one that contains the names of people who heroically made a difference in our own personal lives, and another that contains the names of society\u2019s most heroic legends.<\/p>\n

You may not be surprised at all by this.\u00a0 But it caught us off-guard.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t think that the inclusion of the pronoun \u201cyour\u201d in the question would make a difference. But it certainly did.\u00a0 Our survey respondents appear to be telling us that Gandhi is a<\/em> hero but not their<\/em> hero. \u00a0\u00a0We apparently claim ownership of heroes who personally affect us.\u00a0 They are our<\/em> heroes.\u00a0 But we deflect ownership, or perhaps share ownership, of famous heroes who have re-shaped entire societies.<\/p>\n

When we first set out to study heroes, we had no idea that there were so many different distinctions and dichotomies that characterize heroes.\u00a0 This distinction between personal and cultural heroes is the latest, and there have been many others.\u00a0 Moral heroes versus ability-based heroes.\u00a0 Global heroes versus specific heroes.\u00a0 Direct heroes versus indirect heroes. \u00a0True heroes versus false heroes.\u00a0 Split-second heroes versus lifetime heroes.\u00a0 The list goes on and on, and it is proof that heroism is a complex, multi-faceted phenomenon.<\/p>\n

Our experience here also illustrates the perils and pitfalls of psychometrics.\u00a0 Psychologists always must be careful in how they measure responses in a survey.\u00a0 Sometimes we think we’re measuring one thing but we’re actually measuring something entirely different.\u00a0 And seemingly minor changes in the wording of a question can often yield very different results.<\/p>\n

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Scott T. Allison and George R. Goethals When you think of specific heroes, what people come to mind?\u00a0 In our initial survey of people\u2019s heroes, we would often get two different kinds of answers to this question.\u00a0 Some people would list the names of their parents, teachers, coaches, and other individuals close to them.\u00a0 … Continue reading Personal versus Cultural Heroes<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1182,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5444],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary-and-analysis"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/phawtM-Ak","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}