This paper must be 4 pages long, size 12, Times New Roman font, and must be in MLA format. 

Heroes choose to do good and heroic acts simply because it is the right thing to do. Choose a group of people (soldiers, policeman, doctors, whistleblowers, etc.) that you believe to be a hero or heroes.  You will not only discuss how and why the group you chose is/are heroic, but how they compare to the character Superman (or Clark Kent) from the graphic novel Superman: Birthright.   Also use the article attached, or any other sources about the person or group you choose, as secondary sources for this paper, but you will also need to use evidence from the primary source (Superman: Birthright) to support your argument.  

Since you will be quoting or paraphrasing from the primary and secondary sources, you will need a Works Cited.  

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What Makes a Hero?
We all have an inner hero, argues Philip Zimbardo. Here’s how

to find it.
BY PHILIP ZIMBARDO | JANUARY 18, 2011

This month, Greater Good features videos of a presentation by Philip
Zimbardo, the world-renowned psychologist perhaps best known for his
infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. In his talk, Zimbardo discusses the
psychology of evil and of heroism, exploring why good people sometimes
turn bad and how we can encourage more people to perform heroic acts. In
this excerpt from his talk, he zeroes in on his research and educational
program designed to foster the “heroic imagination.”

What makes us good? What makes us evil?

Research has uncovered many answers to the second question: Evil can
be fostered by dehumanization, diffusion of responsibility, obedience to
authority, unjust systems, group pressure, moral disengagement, and
anonymity, to name a few.

But when we ask why people become heroic, research doesn’t yet have an
answer. It could be that heroes have more compassion or empathy; maybe
there’s a hero gene; maybe it’s because of their levels of oxytocin—
research by neuroeconomist Paul Zak has shown that this “love hormone”
in the brain increases the likelihood you’ll demonstrate altruism. We don’t
know for sure.

I believe that heroism is different than altruism and compassion. For the
last five years, my colleagues and I have been exploring the nature and
roots of heroism, studying exemplary cases of heroism and surveying
thousands of people about their choices to act (or not act) heroically. In that
time, we’ve come to define heroism as an activity with several parts.

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/profile/philip_zimbardo

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/gg_live/science_meaningful_life_videos/speaker/philip_zimbardo/

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First, it’s performed in service to others in need—whether that’s a person,
group, or community—or in defense of certain ideals. Second, it’s engaged
in voluntarily, even in military contexts, as heroism remains an act that goes
beyond something required by military duty. Third, a heroic act is one
performed with recognition of possible risks and costs, be they to one’s
physical health or personal reputation, in which the actor is willing to accept
anticipated sacrifice. Finally, it is performed without external gain
anticipated at the time of the act.

Simply put, then, the key to heroism is a concern for other people in need—
a concern to defend a moral cause, knowing there is a personal risk, done
without expectation of reward.

By that definition, then, altruism is heroism light—it doesn’t always involve
a serious risk. Compassion is a virtue that may lead to heroism, but we
don’t know that it does. We’re just now starting to scientifically distinguish
heroism from these other concepts and zero in on what makes a hero.
My work on heroism follows 35 years of research in which I studied the
psychology of evil, including my work on the infamous Stanford Prison
Experiment. The two lines of research aren’t as different as they might
seem; they’re actually two sides of the same coin.

A key insight from research on heroism so far is that the very same
situations that inflame the hostile imagination in some people, making them
villains, can also instill the heroic imagination in other people, prompting
them to perform heroic deeds.

Take the Holocaust. Christians who helped Jews were in the same situation
as other civilians who helped imprison or kill Jews, or ignored their
suffering. The situation provided the impetus to act heroically or
malevolently. Why did some people choose one path or the other?
Another key insight from my research has been that there’s no clear line
between good and evil. Instead, the line is permeable; people can cross
back and forth between it.

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/gg_live/science_meaningful_life_videos/speaker/philip_zimbardo/a_study_of_evil/

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/gg_live/science_meaningful_life_videos/speaker/philip_zimbardo/a_study_of_evil/

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This is an idea wonderfully represented in an illusion by M. C. Escher, at
left. When you squint and focus on the white as the figures and the black
as the background, you see a world full of angels and tutus dancing around
happily. But now focus on the black as the figures and the white as the
background: Now it’s a world full of demons.

What Escher’s telling us is that the world is filled with angels and devils,
goodness and badness, and these dark and light aspects of human nature
are our basic yin and yang. That is, we all are born with the capacity to be
anything. Because of our incredible brains, anything that is imaginable

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becomes possible, anything that becomes possible can get transformed
into action, for better or for worse.

Some people argue humans are born good or born bad; I think that’s
nonsense. We are all born with this tremendous capacity to be anything,
and we get shaped by our circumstances—by the family or the culture or
the time period in which we happen to grow up, which are accidents of
birth; whether we grow up in a war zone versus peace; if we grow up in
poverty rather than prosperity.

George Bernard Shaw captured this point in the preface to his great play
“Major Barbara”: “Every reasonable man and woman is a potential
scoundrel and a potential good citizen. What a man is depends upon his
character what’s inside. What he does and what we think of what he does
depends on upon his circumstances.”

So each of us may possess the capacity to do terrible things. But we also
posses an inner hero; if stirred to action, that inner hero is capable of
performing tremendous goodness for others.

Another conclusion from my research is that few people do evil and fewer
act heroically. Between these extremes in the bell curve of humanity are
the masses—the general population who do nothing, who I call the
“reluctant heroes”—those who refuse the call to action and, by doing
nothing, often implicitly support the perpetrators of evil.

So on this bell curve of humanity, villains and heroes are the outliers. The
reluctant heroes are the rest. What we need to discover is how to give a
call to service to this general population. How do we make them aware of
the evil that exists? How do we prevent them from getting seduced to the
dark side?

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We don’t yet have a recipe for creating heroes, but we have some clues,
based on the stories of some inspiring heroes.

I love the story of a wonderful nine-year-old Chinese boy, who I call a
dutiful hero. In 2008, there was a massive earthquake in China’s Szechuan
province. The ceiling fell down on a school, killing almost all the kids in it.
This kid escaped, and as he was running away he noticed two other kids
struggling to get out. He ran back and saved them. He was later asked,
“Why did you do that?” He replied, “I was the hall monitor! It was my duty, it
was my job to look after my classmates!”

This perfectly illustrates what I call the “heroic imagination,” a focus on
one’s duty to help and protect others. For him, it was cultivated by being
assigned this role of hall monitor.

Another story: Irena Sendler was a Polish hero, a Catholic woman who
saved at least 2,500 Jewish kids who were holed up in the Warsaw ghetto
that the Nazis had erected. She was able to convince the parents of these

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kids to allow her to smuggle them out of the ghetto to safety. To do this, she
organized a network.

That is a key principle of heroism: Heroes are most effective not alone but
in a network. It’s through forming a network that people have the resources
to bring their heroic impulses to life.

What these stories suggest is that every one of us can be a hero. Through
my work on heroism, I’ve become even more convinced that acts of
heroism don’t just arrive from truly exceptional people but from people
placed in the right circumstance, given the necessary tools to transform
compassion into heroic action.

Building on these insights, I have helped to start a program designed to
learn more of heroism and to create the heroes of tomorrow.

The Heroic Imagination Project (HIP) is amplifying the voice of the world’s
quiet heroes, using research and education networks to promote a heroic
imagination in everyone, and then empower ordinary people of all ages and
nations to engage in extraordinary acts of heroism. We want to
democratize the notion of heroism, to emphasize that most heroes are
ordinary people; it’s the act that’s extraordinary.

There are already a lot of great heroes projects out there, such as the
Giraffe Heroes Project. The HIP is unique in that it’s the only one
encouraging research into heroism, because there’s very little.

Here are a few key insights from research we’ve done surveying 4,000
Americans from across the country. Each of these statements is valid after
controlling for all demographic variables, such as education and
socioeconomic status.

Heroes surround us. One in five—20 percent—qualify as heroes, based
on the definition of heroism I provide above. Seventy-two percent report

http://www.heroicimagination.org/

http://www.giraffe.org/

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helping another person in a dangerous emergency. Sixteen percent report
whistle blowing on an injustice. Six percent report sacrificing for a non-
relative or stranger. Fifteen percent report defying an unjust authority. And
not one of these people has been formally recognized as a hero.

Opportunity matters. Most acts of heroism occur in urban areas, where
there are more people and more people in need. You’re not going to be a
hero if you live in the suburbs. No shit happens in the suburbs!

Education matters. The more educated you are, the more likely you are to
be a hero, I think because you are more aware of situations.

Volunteering matters. One third of all the sample who were heroes also
had volunteered significantly, up to 59 hours a week.

Gender matters. Males reported performing acts of heroism more than
females. I think this is because women tend not to regard a lot of their
heroic actions as heroic. It’s just what they think they’re supposed to do for
their family or a friend.

Race matters. Blacks were eight times more likely than whites to qualify as
heroes. We think that’s in part due to the rate of opportunity. (In our next
survey, we’re going to track responses by area code to see if in fact these
heroes are coming from inner cities.

Personal history matters. Having survived a disaster or personal trauma
makes you three times more likely to be a hero and a volunteer.
Based on these insights into heroism, we’ve put together a toolkit for
potential heroes, especially young heroes in training, who already have
opportunities to act heroically when they’re kids, such as by opposing
bullying.

A first step is to take the “hero pledge,” a public declaration on our website
that says you’re willing to be a hero in waiting. It’s a pledge “to act when

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confronted with a situation where I feel something is wrong,” “to develop my
heroic abilities,” and “to believe in the heroic capacities within myself and
others, so I can build and refine them.”

You can also take our four-week “Hero Challenge” mini-course online to
help you develop your heroic muscles. The challenge may not require you
to do anything heroic, but it’s training you to be heroic. And we offer more
rigorous, research-based education and training programs for middle and
high schools, corporations, and the millitary that make people aware of the
social factors that produce passivity, inspire them to take positive civic
action, and encourage the skills needed to consistently translate heroic
impulses into action.

We’re also in the process of creating an Encyclopedia of Heroes, a
collection of hero stories from all over the world. Not just all the classic
ones and fictional ones, but ones that people from around the world are
going to send in, so they can nominate ordinary heroes with a picture and a
story. It will be searchable, so you can find heroes by age, gender, city and
country. These are the unsung, quiet heroes—they do their own thing, put
themselves in danger, defend a moral cause, help someone in need. And
we want to highlight them. We want them to be inspirational to other people
just like them.

Essentially, we’re trying to build the social habits of heroes, to build a focus
on the other, shifting away from the “me” and toward the “we.” As the poet
John Donne wrote: “No man [or woman] is an island entire of itself; every
man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; … any man’s death
diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never
send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

So every person is part of humanity. Each person’s pulse is part of
humanity’s heartbeat. Heroes circulate the life force of goodness in our
veins. And what the world needs now is more heroes—you. It’s time to take
action against evil.

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About the Author





Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D., is a professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford
University, a professor at Palo Alto University, a two-time past president of
the Western Psychological Association, and a past president of the
American Psychological Association. He is also the author of the best-
selling book The Lucifer Effect and the president of the Heroic Imagination
Project.

MLA Citation:

Zimbardo, Philip. “What Makes a Hero?” Greater Good Magazine, 18 Jan. 2011, https://
greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/what_makes_a_hero.

http://www.heroicimagination.org/

http://www.heroicimagination.org/