{"id":2997,"date":"2013-06-19T16:18:58","date_gmt":"2013-06-19T20:18:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/?p=2997"},"modified":"2018-08-04T21:09:15","modified_gmt":"2018-08-05T01:09:15","slug":"why-scientists-who-study-good-and-evil-are-vulnerable-to-criticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/2013\/06\/19\/why-scientists-who-study-good-and-evil-are-vulnerable-to-criticism\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Scientists Who Study Good and Evil Are Vulnerable To Criticism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>By Scott T. Allison<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Roy Baumeister<\/a>, an eminent professor of psychology at Florida State University, has spent much of his professional life studying the causes of evil.\u00a0 Last year he published an article<\/a> in which he lamented a problem with approaching evil from a scientific standpoint: \u201cSocial scientists are not supposed to let their values cloud their judgment, because doing so can impede the impartial search for truth,\u201d he said.\u00a0 Yet when scientists remain impartial about evil, they are often criticized for seeming to condone it.<\/p>\n

Scientists who study evil attempt to understand perpetrators\u2019 motives and attitudes, and while doing so, scientists may begin viewing evil actions as less atrocious than how others judge them.\u00a0 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 \u201ccarry the moral risk of mitigating their condemnation of some of the worst things that human beings do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baumeister concludes that \u201cif we as social scientists restrict our focus to actions that everyone, including the perpetrator, agrees are evil, we will have almost nothing to study.\u00a0 \"\"<\/a>It is therefore necessary to define evil as in the eye of the beholder<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 In short, evil must be defined in a way that is \u201cnot strongly tethered to objective reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

In my studies of heroism, I\u2019ve encountered a similar issue.\u00a0 There isn\u2019t as much consensus about what defines a hero as one would think.\u00a0 Most people agree that heroes perform great actions, but one observer\u2019s idea of a great action may be very different from that of another observer.\u00a0 Just as evil-doers dismiss the idea that they are evil-doers, heroes themselves often dismiss the idea that they are heroes.\u00a0 As such, my co-author George Goethals<\/a> and I have adopted a view of heroism that is identical to that of Baumeister\u2019s definition of evil:\u00a0 It\u2019s in the eye of the beholder.<\/a><\/p>\n

This definition is very unsatisfying to people who claim to know the objective definition of heroism.\u00a0 Goethals and I have asked hundreds of people to list their heroes and our position is that it\u2019s not our place, as social scientists, to judge people as \u201cwrong\u201d.\u00a0 If tennis players report that tennis great Roger Federer is their hero, we are not going to tell them they are mistaken.\u00a0 If aspiring actresses list Meryl Streep as their hero, we will report it without condemning their judgment.\u00a0 Our goal is to try to understand their reasoning behind their choices.<\/p>\n

Can I, or should I, instruct my daughter about what a hero is from my own personal perspective?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 In my role as a father, I should probably share my values about heroic action with my child.\u00a0\"\"<\/a> But as a social scientist, I just report the results of our surveys and try to make sense of them.\u00a0 In doing so, I know I open myself up for criticism.<\/p>\n

I may believe that athletic prowess is not especially heroic, but that won\u2019t stop me from reporting what people say when asked who their heroes are.\u00a0 Goethals and I believe that people\u2019s beliefs about heroes, however misguided they may or may not be, are worth studying from a scientific perspective.<\/p>\n

People have very different ideas about who society’s heroes are.\u00a0 My goal isn\u2019t to support or refute their choices, but merely to explain them.\u00a0 People believe their heroes are either highly moral, highly competent, or both.\u00a0 \"\"<\/a>Some people believe that heroism requires a lifetime of self-sacrifice; others believe that one self-sacrificing action is sufficient for heroism.\u00a0 Opinions vary widely.\u00a0 But we have found some common patterns.\u00a0 For example, people tend to believe that heroes possess many or all of The Great Eight traits of heroes<\/a>:\u00a0 smart, strong, caring, reliable, resilient, selfless, charismatic, <\/em>and inspiring.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s some encouraging news for people who don\u2019t like many of the individuals that people list as their heroes:\u00a0 Goethals and I have found that as people get older, they become more discriminating in their choice of heroes.\u00a0 People tend to outgrow celebrity \u00a0and sports heroes who only show signs of competence but not much morality.\u00a0 In our 2012 article and in our Heroic Leadership book<\/a>, we call heroes whom we outgrow transitional heroes<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 We\u2019ve 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<\/a>, the New York subway hero who threw himself on the train tracks to save the life of a complete stranger.<\/p>\n

As a social scientist who should remain objective about my reporting of heroes, I shouldn\u2019t express my opinion about the natural maturation process leading people to place greater weight on morality than on competence when choosing heroes.\u00a0 But I can\u2019t resist saying I\u2019m glad to hear it.<\/p>\n

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

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.\u00a0 Last year he published an article in which he lamented a problem with approaching evil from a scientific standpoint: \u201cSocial scientists are not supposed to let their values … Continue reading Why Scientists Who Study Good and Evil Are Vulnerable To Criticism<\/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":[27470,27468,27469],"class_list":["post-2997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary-and-analysis","tag-eye-of-the-beholder","tag-good-vs-evil","tag-science-of-good-and-evil"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/phawtM-Ml","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2997","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=2997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2997\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}