“Now He Belongs to the Ages”: The Heroic Leadership Dynamic and Deep Narratives of Greatness (original) (raw)
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Hero Worship: The Elevation of the Human Spirit
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 2015
In this article, we review the psychology of hero development and hero worship. We propose that heroes and hero narratives fulfill important cognitive and emotional needs, including the need for wisdom, meaning, hope, inspiration, and growth. We propose a framework called the heroic leadership dynamic (HLD) to explain how need-based heroism shifts over time, from our initial attraction to heroes to later retention or repudiation of heroes. Central to the HLD is idea that hero narratives fulfill both epistemic and energizing functions. Hero stories provide epistemic benefits by providing scripts for prosocial action, by revealing fundamental truths about human existence, by unpacking life paradoxes, and by cultivating emotional intelligence. To energize us, heroes promote moral elevation, heal psychic wounds, inspire psychological growth, and exude charisma. We discuss the implications of our framework for theory and research on heroism, leadership processes, and positive psychology.
Declaring and thinking about heroes are common human preoccupations but surprisingly aspects of heroism that reinforce these behaviors are not well-understood. In four thematically consistent studies, we attempt to identify lay perspectives about the psychological functions served by heroes. In Study 1, participants (n = 189) freely generated open-ended descriptions of hero functions, which were then sorted by independent coders into 14 categories (e.g., instill hope, guide others). In Study 2, in an attempt to identify the most important functions associated with heroes, participants (n = 249) rated how each function corresponded with their personal views about heroes. Results from a confirmatory factor analysis suggested that a three-factor model of hero functions fit the data well: participants thought that heroes enhanced the lives of others, promoted morals, and protected individuals from threats. In Study 3 (n = 242), participants rated heroes as more likely to fulfill a protecting function than either leaders or role models. In Studies 4A (n = 38) and 4B (n = 102), participants indicated that thinking about a hero (relative to a leader or an acquaintance) during psychological threat fulfilled personal enhancement, moral modeling, and protection needs. In all, these findings provide an empirical basis to spur additional research about the social and psychological functions that heroes offer.
Making Heroes: The Construction of Courage, Competence, and Virtue
People use the term hero frequently in our culture, and most people can easily name several heroes. Our research explores how people think about heroes as well as the determinants of heroic behavior. People’s heroes may be real-world figures or fictional characters. They are thought to be competent enough to achieve at a high level, moral enough to do the right thing in difficult situations, or both. People’s conceptions of heroes reflect both schemas about what heroes are like and narrative structures about how they act. We consider the possibility that images of heroes and common hero narratives reflect evolutionarily-based archetypes. Given that typical conceptions of heroes include high levels of competence and morality, we consider aspects of self, including self-efficacy, self-affirmation, self-theories of intelligence, self-guides, and self-control that enable people to achieve at high levels and to act morally, even when doing so is difficult. We discuss research showing that people’s needs for heroes prepare them to perceive struggle and to root for underdogs. Work on a death-positivity bias and admiration for martyrs illustrates the centrality of self-sacrifice in hero schemas and the perceptions of heroes. Finally we propose a taxonomy of heroes based on various dimensions of influence such as strength, duration, direction, exposure, and origins. The subtypes of heroes in our taxonomy are Transforming, Transfigured, Traditional, Transparent, Transposed, Tragic, Transitional, Transitory and Trending. In addition, we consider a Transcendent Hero category, referring to heroes who affect their admirers in ways that combine the influences of other types.
Heroism Research: A Review of Theories, Methods, Challenges, and Trends
Journal of Humanistic Psychology
Heroism as an expression of self-actualization and a pinnacle social state is of fundamental interest to humanistic psychology and the field more broadly. This review places the growing discussion on heroic action in a humanistic perspective, as heroism aligns with ethical self-actualization in its highest form, personal meaning making, and social good, and can also involve profound existential costs. This review is organized in four major sections: First, the historical and philosophical underpinnings of heroism are examined, moving from ancient Greco-Roman perspectives, to more modern interpretations of Continental philosophy, and to Freud and Le Bon. Second, the article summarizes in detail a renaissance of interest in the psychology of heroism that began in the early 2000s, moving from a modern re-theorizing of heroism toward empirical exploration. This renewal of interest is described as six overlapping phases: theory building and exploration of operational definitions of heroi...
The Making of a Hero: Cultivating Empathy, Altruism, and Heroic Imagination
Journal of Humanistic Psychology
Heroes are not born; they're made. This article examines the commonalities in the backgrounds of people who take heroic action on behalf of others to theorize the ways in which our society can encourage citizens to prepare themselves to act heroically. In looking closely at a variety of people who have acted heroically, in a single moment or over time, we argue they have at least four crucial commonalities: They imagined situations where help was needed and considered how they would act; they had an expansive sense of empathy, not simply with those who might be considered "like them" but also those who might be thought of as "other" in some decisive respect; they regularly took action to help people, often in small ways; and they had some experience or skill that made them confident about undertaking the heroic action in question.
We Could Be Heroes: Heroic Imagination as a Facilitator of Heroic Tendencies
The present study talks about heroism and how its tendencies can be facilitated by heroic imagination using priming with media. Researchers examine whether heroic imagination or the thought of one’s self to engage into a heroic act, as mediated by priming with media, facilitates heroic tendency or the likelihood of an individual to perform a heroic deed. Participants under experimental conditions were primed with heroic imagination using a video depicting an act of heroism while participants under non-primed conditions were tasked to watch a video without heroic ideation. Both groups were then administered the Heroic Propensity Scale to measure heroic tendency and Social Desirability Scale -17 (Stöber, 2001) for divergent validity. Results show that those who were primed with heroic imagination are more likely to be heroic than those who were not primed. These findings support the idea that priming can be an effective way to increase a person’s chances to act heroically. Limitations such as ethical concerns and recommendations on future research about utilization of different modalities aside from priming and media are further discussed in the study. Keywords: Heroism, Heroic imagination, Heroic Tendency, Priming, Media
Paradoxical Truths in Heroic Leadership: Implications for Leadership Development and Effectiveness
In this chapter, we discuss the basic elements of heroic leadership, showing how heroism and exemplary leadership are deeply intertwined. We then describe six paradoxical truths about heroic leadership that are often unrecognized and unappreciated. We believe that ignorance of these counterintuitive truths and paradoxes about heroic leadership can lead to misunderstandings about leaders, leadership, and leadership development. Most of these paradoxes are a central part of the hero’s journey as described by comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell (1949). We will discuss the genesis of these paradoxical truths, and we will suggest ways that an awareness of these principles can engender better leadership and more effective leadership development.
Human Arenas, 2021
The representations of heroes and the heroic acts point to social values, norms, and morality of the present, creating a bridge between the past and a potential future. In this paper, a cross-cultural explorative study of heroes is presented aiming to explore general tendencies and possible patterns related to the different social contexts. Participants were reached from seven countries via social media (N = 974) for corpus construction. We asked by their choice of hero, national hero, and desired heroic action in their respective countries. A thematic analysis was conducted. Results show that there is a high rate of no choice, while among the chosen the prototypical hero is a lone moral man acting in the private (family) or public sphere (political actors). Both spheres offer the naturalization of the hero. There is a dialogical frame between the exceptional and the ordinary. Chosen heroes are dominantly contemporary males’ family members or political figures. While the purpose att...
The Metamorphosis of the Hero: Principles, Processes, and Purpose
Frontiers in Psychology, 2019
This article examines the phenomenon of heroic metamorphosis: what it is, how it unfolds, and why it is important. First, we describe six types of transformation of the hero: mental, moral, emotional, spiritual, physical, and motivational. We then argue that these metamorphoses serve five functions: they foster developmental growth, promote healing, cultivate social unity, advance society, and deepen cosmic understanding. Internal and external sources of transformation are discussed, with emphasis on the importance of mentorship in producing metamorphic growth. Next we describe the three arcs of heroic transformation: egocentricity to sociocentricity, dependence to autonomy, and stagnation to growth. We then discuss three activities that promote heroic metamorphosis as well as those that hinder it. Implications for research on human growth and development are discussed.