The Bystander’s Dilemma Why we ignore people in need...In the Bosnian civil war, Svetlana Broz found people who risked their lives to help victims—and inspired others to follow

Fall / Winter 2006-07 Greater Good A

DANIEL GOLEMAN RETHINKS SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE

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The Banality of Heroism Philip Zimbardo on everyday heroes

Homeless for a Week: What would Kierkegaard do?

Playground Heroes: Teaching kids to stop bullying

PLUS: Bystanders to Genocide An interview with Philip Gourevitch

www.greatergoodmag.org

Display through May 31

The Bystander’s Dilemma

Why we ignore people in need

“At that moment I saw your face and thought: What would you say if you could see me?”

“If you were to design a compassionate health care system, you wouldn’t design it like this.”

The core of heroism revolves around the individual’s commitment to a noble purpose and the willingness to accept the consequences of fighting for that purpose.

When we are captivated by an attractive face, we have the low road to thank.

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On the cover: Sudanese refugees wait for food and clothing. © Nic Bothma/epa/Corbis

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2 from the editors

3 in briefJoin the club

The biology of empathy

A focusing illusion

4 Q&A Bystanders to GenocideAn interview with Philip Gourevitch about why nations intervene—and why they don’t

42 in printA look at some of the latest books on peace and well-being

44 an idea for the greater goodDaniel Goleman rethinks social intelligence.

45 resources for the greater goodA guide to organizations that promote peace and well-being

Volume III, Issue 2

Greater Goodm a g a z i n e o f t h e g r e a t e r g o o d s c i e n c e c e n t e r a t u c b e r k e l e yFall/Winter 2006-07

A Symposium on the Bystander’s Dilemma

6 We Are All BystandersBut we don’t have to be. Dacher Keltner and Jason Marsh explain why we sometimes shackle our moral instincts, and how we can set them free.

10 Courage Under FireIn the Bosnian civil war, Svetlana Broz found people who risked their lives to help victims—and inspired others to follow their example.

14 Playground HeroesWho can stop bullying? Not just parents and teachers, argue Ken Rigby and Bruce Johnson.

18 Why Do We Walk On By?To understand our indifference toward the homeless, Marc Ian Barasch put himself in their shoes for a week.

22 The Rules of EngagementRoger Simpson explains when journalists should get involved in their stories—and when they shouldn’t.

26 The Eye of the StormIn his photo essay, Ted Jackson reveals how a journalist balances his obligations to his subjects, audience, editors, and his own conscience.

30 The Banality of HeroismZeno Franco and Philip Zimbardo show how ordinary people can become everyday heroes.

Features

36 Finding Meaning in MedicineHow some doctors are cultivating compassion and empathy.by Karin Evans

40 Each One, Help OneAs working families find it harder to pay their bills, one organi-zation connects small donors to people with modest needs. by Elizabeth O’Brien

“Just because you’re a guy doesn’t mean you’re stronger than me.”

“It’s not apparent that our desire to do good will result in something good being done.”

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2 Greater Good Fall / Winter 2006-07

for nearly three years, the research center that publishes this magazine—the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berke-ley (formerly the Center for the Devel-opment of Peace and Well-Being)—has stood at the cutting edge of a new scien-tific movement to understand the roots of human happiness, compassion, and virtue. The findings produced by this movement have grown exponentially—and now we’ll be doing the same.

Starting with our next issue, to come out in June, we’ll be expanding Greater Good from a semi-annual to a quarterly magazine. This will enable us to offer twice as much coverage of ground breaking scientific research, twice as many stories of compassion in action, and twice as many practical tools for building strong, healthy relationships in families, classrooms, and communities.

We’ll also be growing our staff. Already we’ve hired two leaders in the field of independent publishing, managing editor Jeremy Adam Smith and circulation direc-tor Tom White, who will help us elevate all aspects of Greater Good, from our cover stories to our customer service.

We owe much of our expansion to gen-erous grants from the Herb Alpert Founda-tion and from Tom and Ruth Ann Horna-day. Their support has not only endowed us with the resources necessary to shift to a quarterly publication schedule, but has also provided a strong endorsement of our mission and work so far. For these gifts we are profoundly grateful.

But of course, we’re also indebted to you, our readers, for all of your support. Your emails, phone calls, and letters in praise of Greater Good have invigorated us over these past few years. We’ve been inspired by countless stories of how you’ve applied Greater Good articles to your own profes-sional and personal lives—in schools, coun-seling sessions, or relationships with loved ones. And we’re eager for the magazine to delve further with you into complicated questions of what it means to lead a good, ethical life.

We’re continuing that tradition in this issue. While many of our previous articles have focused on the roots of altruistic behavior, here we explore why we so often fail to come to the aid of other people in need. To understand our inaction, we

have to understand the psychology of the bystander.

We’ve all been bystanders—indeed, the contributors to this issue show how bystander inaction lies at the heart of a wide range of social problems, from school bullying and homelessness to ethnic vio-lence and even genocide. But our contribu-tors also show how we can transcend the passivity of the bystander, acting on our moral instincts rather than remaining help-less before the crises, big and small, that confront us every day.

Reading these essays cannot guaran-tee that you’ll spring to action the next time you see a pedestrian collapse on the sidewalk or hear a neighbor’s calls of distress. The inhibitions to action can be overwhelming, and sometimes justified. Some of the essays—such as journalist Ted Jackson’s photo essay on his experiences in Hurricane Katrina—actually explain how remaining a bystander can sometimes be the most appropriate response to a crisis.

But these essays also provide scien-tific insight into why we so readily, and at times unconsciously, assume the role of the bystander. In the process, they help to displace the shame and confusion we sometimes feel when we don’t demonstrate the courage of our convictions. They don’t excuse bystander behavior but reveal its causes—a vital first step toward becoming what contributors to this issue call an “active bystander,” “upstander,” or even “hero.”

Just as it takes practice to cultivate some of the other behaviors and emotions we’ve examined in Greater Good—forgiveness, compassion, empathy—we may have to work to overcome our tendency to be a bystander. But as Zeno Franco and Philip Zimbardo argue in their essay, our capacity for heroism is as natural to us as our incli-nations toward apathy; nurturing heroism requires education, inspiration, and oppor-tunities for reflection. We hope this issue of Greater Good provides all three.

Greater GoodMagazine of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley

EditorsDacher Keltner Jason Marsh

Managing EditorJeremy Adam Smith

Circulation & Marketing DirectorTom White

Circulation Manager Circulation AssistantTalia Alarid Joseph Ferrell

Editorial AssistantsMario Aceves Naazneen BarmaJonathan Chow Eréndira RuedaTanya Vacharkulksemsuk

Book Review EditorJill Suttie

Copy EditorElka Karl

Design EditorAlfonso Jaramillo, iarte design

Executive Director, Greater Good Science CenterChristine Carter McLaughlin

Editorial BoardRichard Davidson, University of Wisconsin, MadisonPaul Ekman, University of California, San FranciscoAmitai Etzioni, The George Washington UniversityOwen Flanagan, Duke UniversityRobert Frank, Cornell UniversityCharles A. Garfield, Shanti; University of California, San FranciscoAlfie Kohn, authorJonathan Kozol, authorNel Noddings, Stanford UniversityPearl Oliner, Humboldt State UniversitySamuel P. Oliner, Humboldt State UniversityElliott Sober, University of Wisconsin, MadisonFrans de Waal, Emory University

Greater Good (ISBN #1553-3239) collects, synthesizes, and interprets groundbreaking scientific research into the roots of compassion, altruism, and peaceful human relationships. It fuses this cutting edge science with inspiring stories, promoting dialogue between social scientists and parents, teachers, community leaders, and policy makers.

Subscriptions: Greater Good is growing from a semi-annual to a quarterly magazine. Annual subscriptions to Greater Good are now $20 for one year (four issues) and $32 for two years (eight issues). Orders outside the U.S. should add $6 for shipping and handling. Checks should be made payable to UC Regents and mailed to Greater Good, 2425 Atherton St., #6070, UC-Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720-6070, USA. Questions? Please email [email protected], call 510-643-8965, or visit www.greatergoodmag.org.

Greater Good is published by the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley (formerly the Center for the Development of Peace & Well-Being), an interdisciplinary research center that promotes the study of human happiness, compassion, and altruism. Funding comes from Tom & Ruth Ann Hornaday, the Herb Alpert Foundation, and other individual donors.

Dacher Keltner Jason Marsh

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from the editors

Fall / Winter 2006-07 Greater Good 3

Join the clubremember high school? you probably didn’t think joining the debate club would change your life. You almost certainly didn’t connect the drama club to the future of American democracy. Yet recent research shows that extracurricular activi-ties may cause youth to develop into politi-cally active adults.

Researchers Daniel McFarland and Reuben Thomas analyzed the responses to two surveys that tracked people from their early adolescence through their mid-twen-ties. In a paper published in the American Sociological Review, McFarland and Thomas report that when teens belonged to certain youth organizations—including service clubs, student council, and even drama and musical groups—they were more likely as adults to participate in politi-cal activities such as voting, performing community service, and joining a political cam-paign. This was true regardless of the teeenagers’ class or social background.

The authors argue that public speaking, performance, debate, and community service imbue youth with the skills, interests, relationships, and communal identities necessary for adult political behavior. Interestingly, they found that for the most part, playing team sports had no effect on later political activity. One sport—cheerleading—actually had a negative association, “suggesting that the activity may be generating self-conceptions (possibly gender-related) that counter the positive political efforts occurring in other activities.” The authors also found that sporadically volunteering on political and environmental campaigns had less impact on adult political activity than consistent community service.

For years, social scientists have docu-mented declines in Americans’ political participation and group membership. This research suggests that encouraging young people to get involved in extracurricular activities can help revitalize civic engage-ment. Indeed, their results are espe-cially compelling at a time when schools continue to cut music and drama clubs. McFarland and Thomas argue that not only should these programs be preserved, they should be extended to homeschooled and underprivileged students. In this way, they write, schools can nurture “more

communally oriented people who are engaged, critical citizens willing to work together to improve our pluralistic demo-cratic society.”

—Naazneen Barma

The biology of empathygender stereotypes presume that men are less emotionally intelligent than women; research has found that the truth is not so simple. Yet a new study suggests that when it comes to empathy, gender might matter.

Dutch neuroscientist Erno Jan Her-mans and his colleagues set out to test whether testosterone directly inhibits a person’s ability to empathize with

someone else—that is, whether it makes him less prone to take another person’s perspective and understand what she is thinking or feeling. To gauge empathy in their study’s 20 female participants, the researchers showed the women 16 short video clips of happy or angry faces (see figure). As the women watched the clips, an instrument called an electomyograph recorded the muscle movement in their faces, measuring how much their expres-sions unconsciously mimicked the faces in each video. Previous research has shown this kind of facial mimicry to be an accu-rate marker of empathy.

Before watching the clips, the women received either a dose of testosterone or a placebo. As the researchers had predicted, mimicry of both kinds of facial expressions was weaker after the women had received testosterone.

Although these results do suggest that testosterone might reduce empathic behav-ior, there are some limitations to this study. For instance, while facial mimicry may be one component of empathic behavior, it is clearly not the defining feature. Before we conclude that testosterone leaves men at an emotional disadvantage, additional studies

must show that testosterone affects the many other dimensions of empathy.

—Mario Aceves

A focusing illusiondoes money buy happiness ? when we see a multi-millionaire on her yacht or pictures of a family vacation in a place we can’t afford, it’s awfully hard to answer, “No.” But scientific research has repeatedly challenged that assumption. Now a recent study has found that although people with high incomes are more likely than others to say they’re generally happy with their lives, this difference virtually disappears when they make a moment-to-moment assess-ment of how happy they really are.

In the study, published in Science, Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahne-man and his co-authors argue that a phenomenon known as the “focusing illusion” misleads people into believing that more money can—or does—make them happier.

“When people consider the impact of any single factor on their well-being—not only income—they are prone to exaggerate its importance,” write the authors. So when

survey respondents are asked, for example, whether wealthier people are happier than those less well-off, they tend to focus on financial status as the root of happiness. Perhaps seduced by thoughts of plasma TVs and seaside resorts, they make too much of the effect wealth can have on one’s well-being.

In reality, according to the study, higher income does little to improve life satisfac-tion, and may even cause more anxiety and stress. “In some cases,” explain the authors, “this focusing illusion may lead to a misallo-cation of time, from accepting lengthy com-mutes… to sacrificing time spent social-izing.” Indeed, in the results of a national survey the authors analyzed, people with an income above $100,000 reported spending more time at work and commuting. This may help to explain why so many people with relatively high incomes reported in the survey that they’re generally happy with their lives, but don’t actually experience as much happiness in their daily lives as they say they do. “People do not know how happy or satisfied they are with their life in the way they know their height or tele-phone number,” the authors write.

—Tanya Vacharkulksemsuk

in brief


Q & A

the conflict in the darfur region of western Sudan has displaced at least two million people over the past four years. International aid groups estimate that it has killed anywhere from 200,000 to more than 400,000 people; state-sponsored militias have targeted many of these people for their ethnic identity. President Bush has even called the conflict “genocide” and said he believes that the United States and other nations “have a responsibility to work together to bring some security” to the people of Darfur.

Yet the violence continues. There’s still no sizable international military interven-tion on the ground, working to stop the conflict—despite protests from politicians, members of the press, and celebrity activ-ists such as George Clooney.

This doesn’t shock Philip Gourevitch. The situation is all too familiar to him. For years, Gourevitch traveled to Rwanda to report on the aftermath of the genocide in that country, in which its Hutu ethnic majority killed 800,000 of the minority Tutsi group. Gourevitch’s reporting on Rwanda ran in The New Yorker, where he was a staff writer, before he published We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families in 1998. That book opened the world’s eyes to what had gone on in Rwanda; it also made clear how and why the world essentially permitted the Rwandan genocide to occur.

Gourevitch, now the editor of The Paris Review, has continued to offer some of the most insightful and credible reporting on crises around the world—and on why nations ostensibly committed to humani-

tarian values don’t intervene to stop these crises.

Greater Good: There’s a story of Presi-dent Clinton reading some of your New Yorker pieces on the genocide in Rwanda and writing in the margins, “How did this happen?” How do you respond to questions like that? Why were the US and the UN reluctant to intervene?

Philip Gourevitch: It’s inaccurate to say they were reluctant to intervene. They were eager not to intervene.

In fact, we had already intervened in Rwanda before the genocide, and the Unit-ed States policy in response to the mas-sacres was to withdraw. By that time, April 1994, there had been a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Rwanda for nearly six months. Although many Americans may not neces-sarily identify a U.N. peacekeeping mission as “us being there,” it was an expression of American foreign policy. Clinton had come into office saying, We ought to do this sort of thing. He advocated a robust peacekeeping and nation-building agenda. He commissioned a presidential decision directive on peacekeeping. That’s a high-level articulation of official administration policy, and it was originally conceived as a paper to explicate when and how we ought to take on missions. It was conceived affirmatively, as a declaration of the sort of circumstances under which we should sup-port and undertake such interventions.

But after American peacekeepers were killed in Somalia, in October of 1993, the purpose of this paper was reconceived. Now the idea was: These are the conditions under which we should not get involved in peacekeeping missions. And as you can

imagine, it was a rather comprehensive list of the very conditions that might call for such missions. And the finished document, which came to be called PDD-25, happens to have been published around the first week of April. So right as the genocide began, this policy was promulgated: to stay away from trouble rather than to deal with it. And we insisted—this was, in fact, part of the policy set out in PDD-25—that if we, the U.S., don’t go in, we should discourage other governments from intervening as well. I guess the thinking was: We have to remain the world leader—we mustn’t get upstaged.

That said, I doubt that any other admin-istration would have done any differently. But when I speak critically of inaction, as I’m doing, it’s frequently presumed that I must be advocating intervention, which isn’t quite right. The problem I’m describing in Rwanda is that we were there, and we with-drew, and that’s the worst case scenario: neither a nonintervention nor an interven-tion, but a false promise of protection, which only ended up making things easier for the killers. The presence of a U.N. mis-sion not only encouraged people who were feeling anxious about impending threats to take their chances and stick around, but actually encouraged a good number of them to specifically congregate in and around U.N. bases, where they were then slaughtered when the U.N., with the U.S.’s encouragement, withdrew. I think one can be unambiguously distressed about that and condemn that—without taking the position that if there’s a genocide, there’s nothing to discuss, we can and should just go in there and solve it. I think that is a position that

Bystanders to Genocide

PHILIP AN INTERVIEW WITH

GOUREVITCHBY JASON MARSH

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becomes very hard to defend in the face of the reality of American interventions.

GG: Can you elaborate on that point? Because, as you mention, some people assume that genocide is a crime against humanity that we should always “solve.” But there’s also a question, implicit in your book, about what “humanity” actually means. We can talk about it in the abstract, but it’s hard to imagine how that concept should inform foreign policy decisions.

PG: Let’s put it this way: If you are sit-ting in your apartment and you hear loud thumping noises and your neighbor wail-ing, do you call the police or do you just try to avoid getting involved? That depends on any number of circumstances, but we know all too well that the impulse to stay out of it is pretty strong and widespread—and it’s not always merely inexplicable, craven, or inexcusable, even if it may be regret-table. Well, the appeal to conscience only diminishes as you move further afield. When the man thumping his wife, or the wife thumping her husband, is across state lines, you don’t feel the same urgency about whether or not to get involved. Sure you’re against it, and you feel bad about the world and you feel someone ought to do something about it, but you don’t neces-sarily feel that it’s your problem. So if you find out that people whose existence you had never previously noticed are raping and axe murdering some other such people on the other side of the planet, do you say, “Let’s get in the middle of that. If we don’t stop it we’re all less safe—they’re human beings just like us”? Alas, it just doesn’t feel that way to most people. Of course, they’re human beings, and it’s a terrible thing, but the sense of a shared fate is weakened by distance and difference.

Genocide is a crime against humanity. The idea is that humanity itself is being reconfigured, a category of humanity is

being eliminated, or an attempt is being made to sort of treat humankind as one organism and sort of chop off a piece of it. But, while that may be an accurate account of the crime, it’s quite abstract and does not really make the crime feel less remote. That is not really how humans are wired to experience and react.

Another problem, which is more of a practical problem, is that it’s not appar-ent that our desire to do good will result in something good being done. There’s a common presumption when we fail to intervene that had we intervened, we would have intervened happily and successfully and well. The result would be righteous. Yet when you look at actual interventions, that has not always been the case. I think we have to reckon with that fact—that our best intentions are not easily realized.

I’m not happy about this. I don’t mean to say, I told you so. And it’s not simply defeat-ist or isolationist to say we have to be clear about the gaps between our rhetoric and our record, or our capabilities. I’m saying, you know, this is what the evidence seems to be. If we’re looking at how things are, rather than simply insisting they shouldn’t be how they are, it’s pretty plain that we cannot consider ourselves a good bet for saving the world.

GG: How does all this apply to the situa-tion in Darfur?

PG: Is anybody with the capability to stage a big intervention really interested in doing so? Is anybody ready to go into that desert and start fighting large numbers of guys on camels and horses, or columns of men who look like columns of refugees, and with a government that has promised to open the gates of hell to any foreign force who enters uninvited? It’s a nasty reality—the definition of a nonpermissive environment.

We didn’t want to intervene in a permis-sive environment at the climax of Liberia’s civil war, when both sides were begging America to intervene. Bush decided not to do it. And it seemed to me that that was the moment when people who said, “The lessons of Rwanda are being learned in Kosovo, in East Timor, and in Iraq” had missed a crucial point: Those so-called lessons only ever apply to places that have some other than humanitarian value. They also invariably have some military or eco-nomic strategic value.

GG: So where does that leave us now? Should we just conclude that our leaders, and even ourselves, are incapable of truly extending a sense of moral obligation to people halfway around the world who look very different from us?

PG: We’re not totally incapable, but we’re obviously not always as able to reach around the world and sort things out and leave them in better shape as we’d like to think we are. Is it wise for us to use force in places we don’t really know or understand deeply? What we call humanitarian crises are always symptoms of political conflicts, and they cannot be treated without getting into the politics. So we have to confront the limits of our ability to marry our moral sense of pure common humanity to the amoral instruments of politics and force. And by amoral I don’t mean immoral, I mean amoral—these instruments may be used morally, and they may be used immorally, but that’s not what makes them tick. So the question hanging over any intervention is: Are we as ready to fight and die to sort out other people’s problems as they are—and if not, can we really prevail?

Jason Marsh is a co-editor of Greater Good.

PHILIP

If we’re looking at how things are, rather than simply insisting they shouldn’t be how they are, it’s pretty plain that we cannot consider ourselves a good bet for saving the world.

THE BYSTANDER’S DILEMMA


for more tha n 40 years , peggy Kirihara has felt guilty about Stewart.

Peggy liked Stewart. They went to high school together. Their fathers were friends, both farmers in California’s Central Valley, and Peggy would always say “hi” when she passed Stewart in the hall.

Yet every day when Stewart boarded their school bus, a couple of boys would tease him mercilessly. And every day, Peggy would just sit in her seat, silent.

“I was dying inside for him,” she said. “There were enough of us on the bus who were feeling awful—we could have done something. But none of us said anything.”

Peggy still can’t explain why she didn’t stick up for Stewart. She had known his tormenters since they were all little kids, and she didn’t find them threatening. She thinks if she had spoken up on his behalf, other kids might have chimed in to make the teasing stop.

But perhaps most surprising—and distressing—to Peggy is that she considers herself an assertive and moral person, yet those convictions aren’t backed up by her conduct on the bus.

“I think I would say something now, but I don’t know for sure,” she said. “Maybe if I saw someone being beaten up and killed, I’d just stand there. That still worries me.”

Many of us share Peggy’s concern. We’ve all found ourselves in similar situations: the times we’ve seen some-one harassed on the street and didn’t intervene; when we’ve driven past a car stranded by the side of the road, assuming another driver would pull over to help; even when we’ve noticed litter on the sidewalk and left it for someone else to pick up. We witness a problem, consider some kind of positive action, then respond by doing… nothing. Something holds us back. We remain bystanders.

Why don’t we help in these situations? Why do we sometimes put our moral instincts in shackles? These are questions that haunt all of us, and they apply well beyond the fleeting scenarios described above.

Every day we serve as bystanders to the world around us—not just to people in need on the street but to larger social, political, and environmental problems that concern us, but which we feel powerless to address on our own. Indeed, the bystander phenomenon pervades the history of the past century.

“The bystander is a modern archetype, from the Holocaust to the genocide in Rwanda to the current environmental crisis,” says Charles Garfield, a clinical professor of psychology at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medi-cine who is writing a book about the psy-chological differences between bystanders and people who display “moral courage.”

But we don’t have to be. Dacher Keltner and Jason Marsh explain why we sometimes shackle our moral instincts, and how we can set them free.

We Are AllBystanders


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“Why,” asked Garfield, “do some people respond to these crises while others don’t?”

In the shadow of these crises, research-ers have spent the past few decades trying to answer Garfield’s question. Their find-ings reveal a valuable story about human nature: Often, only subtle differences separate the bystanders from the morally courageous people of the world. Most of us, it seems, have the potential to fall into either category. It is the slight, seemingly insignificant details in a situation that can push us one way or the other.

Researchers have identified some of the invisible forces that restrain us from acting on our own moral instincts while also sug-gesting how we might fight back against these unseen inhibitors of altruism. Taken together, these results offer a scientific understanding for what spurs us to every-day altruism and lifetimes of activism, and what induces us to remain bystanders.

Altruistic inertiaAmong the most infamous bystanders are 38 people in Queens, New York, who in 1964 witnessed the murder of one of their neighbors, a young woman named Kitty Genovese (see sidebar on page nine).

A serial killer attacked and stabbed Genovese late one night outside her apart-ment house, and these 38 neighbors later admitted to hearing her screams; at least three said they saw part of the attack take place. Yet no one intervened.

While the Genovese murder shocked the American public, it also moved several social psychologists to try to understand the behavior of people like Genovese’s neighbors.

One of those psychologists was John Darley, who was living in New York at the time. Ten days after the Genovese murder, Darley had lunch with another psycholo-gist, Bibb Latané, and they discussed the incident.

“The newspaper explanations were focusing on the appalling personalities of those who saw the murder but didn’t intervene, saying they had been dehuman-ized by living in an urban environment,” said Darley, now a professor at Princeton University. “We wanted to see if we could explain the incident by drawing on the social psychological principles that we knew.”

A main goal of their research was to determine whether the presence of other people inhibits someone from intervening in an emergency, as had seemed to be the case in the Genovese murder. In one of

their studies, college students sat in a cubi-cle and were instructed to talk with fellow students through an intercom. They were told that they would be speaking with one, two, or five other students, and only one person could use the intercom at a time.

There was actually only one other per-son in the study—a confederate (someone working with the researchers). Early in the study, the confederate mentioned that he sometimes suffered from seizures. The next time he spoke, he became increasingly loud and incoherent; he pretended to choke and gasp. Before falling silent, he stammered:

If someone could help me out it would it would er er s-s-sure be sure be good… because er there er er a cause I er I uh I’ve got a a one of the er sei-er-er things coming on and and and I could really er use some help… I’m gonna die er er I’m gonna die er help er er seizure er….

Eighty-five percent of the participants who were in the two-person situation, and hence believed they were the only witness to the victim’s seizure, left their cubicles to help. In contrast, only 62 percent of the participants who were in the three-person situation and 31 percent of the participants in the six-person situation tried to help.

Darley and Latané attributed their results to a “diffusion of responsibility”: When study participants thought there were other witnesses to the emergency, they felt less personal responsibility to intervene. Similarly, the witnesses of the Kitty Genovese murder may have seen other apartment lights go on, or seen each other in the windows, and assumed someone else would help. The end result is altruistic inertia. Other researchers have also suggested the effects of a “confusion of responsibility,” where bystanders fail to help someone in distress because they don’t want to be mistaken for the cause of that distress.

Darley and Latané also suspected that bystanders don’t intervene in an emergency because they’re misled by the reactions of the people around them. To test this hypothesis, they ran an experiment in which they asked participants to fill out questionnaires in a laboratory room. After the participants had gotten to work, smoke filtered into the room—a clear signal of danger.

When participants were alone, 75 percent of them left the room and reported the smoke to the experimenter. With three

participants in the room, only 38 percent left to report the smoke. And quite remark-ably, when a participant was joined by two confederates instructed not to show any concern, only 10 percent of the participants reported the smoke to the experimenter.

The passive bystanders in this study succumbed to what’s known as “pluralistic ignorance”—the tendency to mistake one another’s calm demeanor as a sign that no emergency is actually taking place. There are strong social norms that reinforce plu-ralistic ignorance. It is somewhat embar-rassing, after all, to be the one who loses his cool when no danger actually exists. Such an effect was likely acting on the people who witnessed the Kitty Genovese incident; indeed, many said they didn’t realize what was going on beneath their windows and assumed it was a lover’s quar-rel. That interpretation was reinforced by the fact that no one else was responding, either.

A few years later, Darley ran a study with psychologist Daniel Batson that had seminary students at Princeton walk across campus to give a talk. Along the way, the students passed a study confederate, slumped over and groaning in a passage-way. Their response depended largely on a single variable: whether or not they were late. Only 10 percent of the students stopped to help when they were in a hurry; more than six times as many helped when they had plenty of time before their talk.

Lateness, the presence of other peo-ple—these are some of the factors that can turn us all into bystanders in an emer-gency. Yet another important factor is the characteristics of the victim. Research has shown that people are more likely to help those they perceive to be similar to them, including others from their own racial or ethnic groups. In general, women tend to receive more help than men. But this varies according to appearance: More attractive and femininely dressed women tend to receive more help from passersby, perhaps because they fit the gender stereotype of the vulnerable female.

We don’t like to discover that our propensity for altruism can depend on prejudice or the details of a particular situa-tion—details that seem beyond our control. But these scientific findings force us to consider how we’d perform under pressure; they reveal that Kitty Genovese’s neighbors might have been just like us. Even more frightening, it becomes easier to understand how good people in Rwanda or Nazi Ger-many remained silent against the horrors


around them. Afraid, confused, coerced, or willfully unaware, they could convince themselves that it wasn’t their responsibil-ity to intervene.

But still, some did assume this respon-sibility, and this is the other half of the bystander story. Some researchers refer to the “active bystander,” that person who wit-nesses an emergency, recognizes it as such, and takes it upon herself to do something about it.

Who are these people? Are they inspired to action because they receive strong cues within a situation, indicating it’s an emergency? Or is there a particular set of characteristics—a personality type—that makes some people more likely to be active bystanders while others remain passive?

Why people helpA leader in the study of the differences between active and passive bystanders is psychologist Ervin Staub, whose research interests were shaped by his experiences as a young Jewish child in Hungary during World War II.

“I was to be killed in the Holocaust,” he said. “And there were important bystanders in my life who showed me that people don’t have to be passive in the face of evil.”

One of these people was his family’s maid, Maria, a Christian woman who risked her life to shelter Staub and his sister while 75 percent of Hungary’s 600,000 Jews were killed by the Nazis.

Staub has tried to understand what motivates the Marias of the world. Some of his research has put a spin on the experi-mental studies pioneered by Darley and Latané, exploring what makes people more likely to intervene rather than serve as pas-sive bystanders.

In one experiment, a study participant and a confederate were placed in a room together, instructed to work on a joint task. Soon afterwards, they heard a crash and cries of distress. When the confederate dismissed the sounds—saying something like, “That sounds like a tape…. Or I guess it could be part of another experi-ment.”—only 25 percent of the participants went into the next room to try to help. But when the confederate said, “That sounds bad. Maybe we should do something,” 66 percent of the participants took action. And when the confederate added that participants should go into the next room to check out the sounds, every single one of them tried to help.

In another study, Staub found that kindergarten and first grade children were

actually more likely to respond to sounds of distress from an adjoining room when they were placed in pairs rather than alone. That seemed to be the case because, unlike the adults in Darley and Latané’s studies, the young children talked openly about their fears and concerns, and together tried to help.

These findings suggest the positive influence we can exert as bystanders. Just as passive bystanders reinforce a sense that nothing is wrong in a situation, the active bystander can, in fact, get people to focus on a problem and motivate them to take action.

John Darley has also identified actions a victim can take to get others to help him. One is to make his need clear—“I’ve twisted my ankle and I can’t walk; I need help”—and the other is to select a specific person for help—“You there, can you help me?” By doing this, the victim overcomes the two biggest obstacles to intervention. He prevents people from concluding there is no real emergency (thereby eliminating the effect of pluralistic ignorance), and prevents them from thinking that someone else will help (thereby overcoming diffu-sion of responsibility).

But Staub has tried to take this research one step further. He has developed a questionnaire meant to identify people with a predisposition toward becoming active bystanders. People who score well on this survey express a heightened concern for

the welfare of others, greater feelings of social responsibility, and a commitment to moral values—and they also prove more likely to help others when an opportunity arises.

Similar research has been conducted by sociologist Samuel Oliner. Like Staub, Oliner is a Holocaust survivor whose work has been inspired by the people who helped him escape the Nazis. With his wife Pearl, a professor of education, he conducted an extensive study into “the altruistic personality,” interviewing more than 400 people who rescued Jews during the Holocaust, as well as more than 100 nonrescuers and Holocaust survivors alike. In their book The Altruistic Personality, the Oliners explain that rescuers shared some deep personality traits, which they described as their “capacity for extensive relationships—their stronger sense of attachment to others and their feelings of responsibility for the welfare of others.” They also found that these tendencies had been instilled in many rescuers from the time they were young children, often stemming from parents who displayed more tolerance, care, and empathy toward their children and toward people different from themselves.

“I would claim there is a predisposi-tion in some people to help whenever the opportunity arises,” said Oliner, who contrasts this group to bystanders. “A bystander is less concerned with the outside world, beyond his own immedi-ate community. A bystander might be less tolerant of differences, thinking ‘Why should I get involved? These are not my people. Maybe they deserve it? ’ They don’t see helping as a choice. But rescuers see tragedy and feel no choice but to get involved. How could they stand by and let another person perish?”

Kristen Monroe, a political scientist at the University of California, Irvine, has reached a similar conclusion from her own set of interviews with various kinds of altruists. In her book The Heart of Altruism, she writes of the “altruistic perspective,” a common perception among altruists “that they are strongly linked to others through a shared humanity.”

But Monroe cautions that differences are often not so clear cut between bystanders, perpetrators, and altruists.

“We know that perpetrators can be rescuers and some rescuers I’ve interviewed have killed people,” she said. “It’s hard to see someone as one or the other because they cross categories. Academics like to

“The bystander is a modern archetype, from the Holocaust to the genocide in Rwanda to the current environmental crisis.”


IN THE MEDIA

think in categories. But the truth is that it’s not so easy.”

Indeed, much of the bystander research suggests that one’s personality only deter-mines so much. To offer the right kind of help, one also needs the relevant skills or knowledge demanded by a particular situation.

As an example, John Darley referred to his study in which smoke was pumped into a room to see whether people would react to that sign of danger. One of the participants in this study had been in the Navy, where his ship had once caught on fire. So when this man saw the smoke, said Darley, “He got the hell out and did some-thing, because of his past experiences.”

There’s an encouraging implication of these findings: If given the proper tools and primed to respond positively in a cri-sis, most of us have the ability to transcend our identities as bystanders.

“I think that altruism, caring, social responsibility is not only doable, it’s teach-able,” said Oliner.

And in recent years, there have been many efforts to translate research like Oliner’s into programs that encourage more people to avoid the traps of becom-ing a bystander.

Anti-bystander educationErvin Staub has been at the fore of this anti-bystander education. In the 1990s, in the wake of the Rodney King beating, he worked with California’s Department of Justice to develop a training program for police officers. The goal of the program was to teach officers how they could inter-vene when they feared a fellow officer was about to use too much force.

“The police have a conception, as part of their culture, that the way you police a fellow officer is to support whatever they’re doing, and that can lead to trag-edy, both for the citizens and the police themselves,” said Staub. “So here the notion was to make police officers positive active bystanders, getting them engaged early enough so that they didn’t have to confront their fellow officer.”

More recently, Staub helped schools in Massachusetts develop an anti-bystander curriculum, intended to encourage chil-dren to intervene against bullying. The program draws on earlier research that identified the causes of bystander behavior. For instance, older students are reluctant to discuss their fears about bullying, so each student tacitly accepts it, afraid to make waves, and no one identifies the

problem—a form of pluralistic ignorance. Staub wants to change the culture of the classroom by giving these students oppor-tunities to air their fears.

“If you can get people to express their concern, then already a whole different situation exists,” he said.

This echoes a point that John Dar-ley makes: More people need to learn about the subtle pressures that can cause bystander behavior, such as diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance. That way they’ll be better prepared next time they encounter a crisis situation.

“We want to explode one particular view that people have: ‘Were I in that situation, I would behave in an altruistic, wonderful way,’” he said. “What I say is, ‘No, you’re misreading what’s happening. I want to teach you about the pressures [that can cause bystander behavior]. Then when you feel those pressures, I want that to be a cue that you might be getting things wrong.’”

Research suggests that this kind of edu-cation is possible. One set of studies even found that people who attended social psychology lectures about the causes of bystander behavior were less susceptible to those influences.

But of course, not even this form of education is a guarantee against becom-ing a bystander. We’re always subject to the complicated interaction between our personal disposition and the demands of circumstance. And we may never know how we’ll act until we find ourselves in a crisis.

To illustrate this point, Samuel Oliner told the story of a Polish brickmaker who was interviewed for Oliner’s book, The Altruistic Personality. During World War II, a Jewish man who had escaped from a concentration camp came to the brick-maker and pleaded for help. The brick-maker turned him away, saying he didn’t want to put his own family at risk.

“So is he evil?” asked Oliner. “I wouldn’t say he’s evil. He couldn’t act quickly enough, I suppose, to say, ‘Hide in my kiln,’ or ‘Hide in my barn.’ He didn’t think that way.”

“If I was the bricklayer and you came to me, and the Nazis were behind you and the Gestapo was chasing you—would I be willing to help? Would I be willing to risk my family? I don’t know. I don’t know if I would be.”

Dacher Keltner, Ph.D., and Jason Marsh are the co-editors of Greater Good.

Kitty Genovese, American IconBY K ATHY M. NEWMAN

Kitty Genovese’s screams were ignored in 1964,

but she has been embraced as a pop culture icon ever since. Musicians, play-wrights, and filmmakers have

all found meaning in the story of her murder and its 38 witnesses.

“It’s a story about ordinary people in a hor-rible situation,” said playwright David Simpati-co, whose opera The Screams of Kitty Genovese was featured in the New York Musical Theatre Festival last September. “Her story reminds us, in our current culture of fear, that we have to take care of each other.”

One of the first times Genovese’s murder appeared in popular culture was in Phil Ochs’s 1967 song, “Outside of a Small Circle of Friends.” In the first verse, he sang:

Look outside the window, there’s a woman being grabbed / They’ve dragged her to the bushes and now she’s being stabbed /

Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain / But Monopoly is so much fun, I’d hate to blow the game /

And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody / Outside of a small circle of friends.

In 1975, CBS made a TV movie based on the murder, Death Scream, starring Raul Julia as the investigating detective. In the 1980s, Kitty’s murder was featured as the incident that inspired a vigilante superhero to fight crime in Alan Moore’s comic book series, Watchmen.

In the last year alone, there’s been a flurry of dramatic retellings of the story, including a play based on interviews with Kitty’s lesbian lover, 38 Witnessed Her Death, I Witnessed Her Love: The Lonely Secret of Mary Ann Zielonko. A group of Pittsburgh-area college students made a film about the murder, When Darkness Cries, and Kitty’s brother, Bill, is finishing a documentary about the people who have been touched by his sister’s death. Playwright David Simpatico said he spoke with Bill Genovese after the opening performance of The Screams of Kitty Genovese.

“I told [Bill] why I had to write this opera: because maybe after seeing this performance, the audience will be better armed, and they’ll think, ‘Oh, I’ve seen this situation before, I know what to do.’”




when war broke out in yugoslavia in the early 1990s, the daily conversations in its capital city, Belgrade, spoke only of evil. The city where I had grown up, where I had completed my medical studies, and which I loved as a cosmopolitan, open city had turned into a beehive, in which every individual bee was storing up reserves of hatred. Even among my former friends, discussions focused only on the question of whose contribution to the destruction was greatest. Media coverage—in Belgrade and around the world—reduced the war to a black-and-white issue of good vs. bad. I was surrounded by hostility, blame, and fear.

Refusing to believe that nothing human existed amidst all the madness of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, I searched for the humanity behind the headlines. I started going to the war zones in January 1993—initially as a cardiologist determined to help at least one person lacking proper medical care because of the war.

But while providing care for the people of three major ethno-national backgrounds —distinguished as Catholic Croats, Muslim Bosniaks, and Eastern Orthodox Christian Serbs by nationalist politicians—I felt their need to open their souls and talk as human beings, without being judged about their roles in the war. The short, spontaneous stories they told me in the cardiology ward were surprisingly nuanced and refined compared to Belgrade’s and the world’s much more simplistic pictures of the Bos-nian war zone.

I was told stories of individuals in Bosnia and Herzegovina who had the courage to stand up to crimes being committed against the innocent, even when they had no weapons to help them. These people served as genuine examples of the good-ness, compassion, humanity, and civil cour-age that continued to exist in these times of evil. They broke free from the identity of the bystander, that person who chooses to look away, to ignore, and to silently accept the suffering of others. Instead, these human beings provided compelling examples of upstanders, people who stick to their moral convictions and norms, and demonstrate great civil courage through their acts, even in a situation as horrific as the Bosnian war. My book Good People in an Evil Time is a collection of 90 first-hand testimonies from people who survived the war, illustrating the ways in which anony-mous people were upstanders.

Some people may dismiss these stories, believing that wartime examples of violent behavior reveal far more about human nature. I disagree. We must pay careful attention to these stories, because they hold up a mirror and require us to reflect on our own acts and behavior. They clearly demonstrate the possibility of choice, even in the most trying circumstances. When shared, these stories can therefore encour-age more people to stand up and speak out against evil, and to act in accordance with their moral norms. The hundreds of inter-views I’ve conducted, and the reactions

from the tens of thousands of people with whom I have shared these stories, have repeatedly confirmed this idea. Indeed, I’ve found that discussing upstanders’ actions can have the very real and enduring effect of inspiring others to follow their example.

Uncovering the upstandersThough it can be difficult to offer a precise definition of an upstander, we can usually identify an example of one when we hear it. Consider the story a Serb woman from the Croatian town of Novska shared with me. In October of 1991, she and her husband fled to the region of Baranja, on the border between Croatia and Serbia, where they lived as refugees. Assuming that it would be safer for him, they sent their 15-year-old son to live with an aunt in the Bosnian town of Zenica. Then they realized that the war was about to break out in Bosnia and Herzegovina as well.

The woman set out for Zenica, deter-mined to bring her son back. She hitch-hiked to within 60 miles of the town, but no buses or taxis would go any further.

Desperate, I sat down on the sidewalk and burst into tears. A stranger came over, a middle-aged man, and asked, “What’s wrong, ma’am? May I be of help in some way?” I told him the reason for my journey, looking up with hope.

“Well, I have to say, ma’am, that you really are asking the impossible!

When the Bosnian civil war broke out, Svetlana Broz searched for the humanity behind the horrific headlines. She found stories of people who risked their lives to help victims of the war—and who inspired others to follow their example.

UNDER FIRE COURAGE



There are barricades up every few miles from here to Zenica and there are armed men at every checkpoint. That is why no one dares to drive you.” And he walked slowly away, his head bowed.

For at least half an hour I was sitting there, sobbing miserably, not knowing what to do. Just then a car pulled up in front of me and at the wheel was that same stranger, calling, “Ma’am, get in. I’ll do what I can to help you. I’ll try to get us over special transport roads that run through the woods. Maybe they don’t have bar-ricades up in there yet.”

Early that evening we arrived at my sister’s house. Overjoyed, I held my son close and we talked non-stop in the car while the stranger drove without saying a word. Intoxicated by the delight of being reunited with my son, I was startled when the man said, “Ma’am, this is as far as I can go. The Serbian barricades are just beyond the next curve in the road. You’ll have to do that part on foot.” On my way out of the car I thanked him, and asked what I owed him. “Nothing, ma’am. Your happiness and your son’s are all the payment I need.”

It was only much later that I put two and two together and realized that the stranger had had to stop before the barricades because he was not a Serb.

As this example of human goodness illustrates, the upstander actively confronts the choice of whether to defy immorality or keep quiet and accept things the way they are. As Hannah Arendt has power-fully said about humanity: “It is always pos-sible to say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’” and upstanders are exactly those who want to make decisions about when to say “no” to evil. The driver

in this story was willing to sacrifice his life when he said “no” to the unjust boundaries drawn along constructed ethnic lines and chose to recognize the love of a mother for her son.

The civil courage that characterizes the upstander is, in the words of the founder and first president of Oxford University’s Templeton College, Uwe Kitzinger, “the courage of the non-conformist.” It is the courage that risks social disapproval, the capacity to resist by thinking critically

with one’s own mind, and the will to be an active participant in life, not a passive bystander.

Regardless of their differences in age, gender, literacy, religious affiliation, ethnic identity, or wartime roles, upstanders share the bravery to risk their lives rather than commit or be complicit in a crime. When so many other people choose to com-prise their morals in order to survive, the upstander’s actions suggest that we must not allow ourselves to be debased by cir-cumstance: To retain our dignity, we must sometimes refuse to live life at any cost.

This idea resonates powerfully in a story told to me by a factory manager from Cen-tral Bosnia. Croatian soldiers and paramili-tary units had brought the man, his family, and his neighbors—all Muslim by national-ity—to a makeshift prison camp.

After several days they took 40 of the prisoners, including my wife, our two five-year-old twin boys, and myself, and lined us up in a row. Then they brought over a civilian, a man who was Croatian like they were, but who was also my closest friend. They ordered him to choose a dozen of us from the lines and to decide how we would be killed. I was horrified—he knew all of us so well. Without a sec-ond thought he turned to the armed murderers and said, “You should be ashamed of yourselves! These people are innocent. Release them. Let them

To retain our dignity, we must sometimes refuse to live life at any cost.

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Women and children are reunited with their families after being imprisoned by Serb authorities during the Bosnian civil war.


go home.” Then he turned to us and, looking right into our eyes, said, “I’m so sorry. This is all I can do. I know they will kill me tonight. I wish all of you the best.” His soldiers dragged him off somewhere, and took us back to the prison camp.

My best friend was right. The criminal soldiers, his own kind, killed him that night. We were luckier. After several months, we were saved through an exchange of prisoners.

The motivations of upstanders like this one are not easy to determine, especially because we often only learn of their actions through the stories told by others. There is no road map that allows others simply to follow their traces. Their reasons to act righteously are often personal and may depend on circumstance. What motives upstanders generally have in common is a question not for a cardiologist like myself, but for psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists to debate.

But we do not need to pin down general, abstract motivations to understand the function of these stories. These stories stir our souls. They reach out and make us contemplate our own values and actions. They also represent an axis around which it is possible to build a healthy future after the atrocities have ceased, giving them enormous social, cultural, and religious value. The effects of an upstander’s behav-ior can extend well beyond a single heroic act and across geographical boundaries, as

the people who benefit from such acts try to emulate them. And as they tell their own story, the effects grow.

Education toward civil courageA few years ago at a conference I attend-ed, I heard Sami Adwan, a Palestinian psychologist, explain why he had chosen to dedicate his life to work for peaceful coexistence between Palestinians and Jews. As a young man he was held in an Israeli military prison, where he shared a cell with several other prisoners. The commanding officer had ordered the prison’s soldiers not to give them any water. For three days, the prisoners suffered. On the fourth day a sol-dier came into the cell, and after checking that none of his superiors were watching, he pulled out a canteen and gave it to the prisoners without a word. Several days later, the commanding officer beat Adwan for refusing to sign a document written in a language he didn’t understand. After sev-eral blows he could hear the voice of that same soldier with the canteen: “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself for hitting this man just because he wouldn’t sign something he couldn’t read? I would never sign if I were in his place.” That soldier gave Adwan hope, and changed his life.

All wars, everywhere in the world, contain such examples of brave souls who have said “no” in the face of a totalitar-ian regime, of nationalist doctrine, ethnic cleansing, annihilation, and persecution.

And as the incidence of the upstander is universal, so too is its significance. The actions of these real, often anonymous peo-ple make others realize that they too have choices in life. One needn’t benefit directly from an upstander’s actions to be inspired to follow in his footsteps. Sometimes, just hearing his story is enough.

Since October of 2005, I have worked with more than 18,000 students from the Western Balkans, who have heard me lecture on kindness, morality, and civil courage. Many of them come to my lec-tures convinced that they cannot change anything, that they are not important as individuals, and that they are without influence over the society in which they live. They feel completely on the margins of their worlds. They only dream about finishing their education and moving out of their country; indeed, 75 percent of the youth of Bosnia and Herzegovina want to leave their homeland. But upon hearing stories of upstanders, and discussing these courageous acts with me, they seem to awake from a deep sleep. Suddenly, they want to become actively involved in the events around them. Loudly and clearly, they show that they are able to recognize negative authorities, and they often con-front them.

After one lecture, for example, stu-dents from Tuzla in Bosnia and Herze-govina were inspired to form a movement demanding the introduction of sex educa-tion into secondary schools—an important but neglected public health issue. They


Svetlana Broz (left) speaks with students in a seminar near Sarajevo. She lectures to thousands of students every year about the importance of civil courage.

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The Making of an UpstanderBY JASON MARSH

In a 2002 report on “Altruism and Compas-sion in War,” Harvard University researchers

Nancy Briton and Jennifer Leaning identify some possible motivations underlying an upstander’s behavior. Their report was based on thousands of hours of interviews with people living in 12 of the most war-torn regions on earth, includ-ing Bosnia and Herzegovina, Afghanistan, and Cambodia. Here are the four main factors they uncovered. (For more on their work, please see “In Search of the Moral Voice” in the Spring 2004 issue of Greater Good.)

1. Feelings of group affiliation. People tend to favor members of their own group over oth-ers, but Briton and Leaning found that some people were able to find common ground with people they could have easily dismissed as enemies. The trick, said Briton, is helping people in war find a “thread of similarity” with others. “They’re little threads, but there are so many that are available to us.”

2. Feelings of self-efficacy. If people felt they had the tools to help someone, the authors found, they were more likely to act on altruistic motives that might otherwise have remained dormant. The report quotes a Palestinian ambulance driver who said that because of his professional responsibilities, he would rescue a wounded Israeli soldier, even if that soldier had killed a relative of his. It also mentions a Christian Lebanese journal-ist who used his press ID to rescue Muslims from danger.

3. A desire for reciprocity. Combatants who performed altruistic acts often attributed their behavior to reciprocity—the idea being that they treated their enemies the same way they wanted to be treated in return. Other interview subjects explained reciprocity as a way to try to stem cycles of violence.

4. A desire to recapture one’s moral identity. Some people simply seemed sick and tired of violent conflict, and wanted to regain the moral identity that war had eclipsed. But how can people be reminded of their moral identities when they are stuck in the moral vacuum of war? Leaning said she believes that international NGOs play an important role. If people in warfare have lost touch with their own moral voice, she said, “Perhaps they’ll have a shock of recognition when they see someone coming out of a Land Rover and holding a white flag.”

collected signatures and sent a petition to the conservative regional minister of education, announced their actions in the media, and were ready for demonstrations if their request was not met. The deci-sion is pending. Other students who had attended my lecture organized themselves to visit the director of a school in their city who had openly obstructed his students from participating in the event. When they were not welcomed, they decided to distribute copies of my book Having What It Takes to the school’s students them-selves during their lunch break. Examples of corruption, manipulation, and even pedophilia in schools have been named openly during my public lectures, which often have members of the media pres-ent, helping to bring these problems into the public realm. This is an encouraging development.

And even in the very peaceful Swedish city of Gothenburg, where the citizens can hardly remember the last time their country fought a war, the topic of civil courage became very important to one university student. He sent me an email in 2001 about an experience he had three days after hearing my lecture.

I was on the bus in Gothenburg and saw three enraged men physically abusing the bus driver, who wanted them to leave the bus. He was cov-ered in blood. I was turning to see the reactions of other passengers, but all of them were looking out of

the window. I turned and looked through the window myself, but at that moment I saw your face and thought: What would you say if you could see me? What would all those who sacrificed their lives to protect someone who was unjustly perse-cuted do? I threw myself on those three attackers, who broke my nose with the first blow. But I managed to enable the driver to call the police on his mobile phone.

This story demonstrates the young man’s courage; it also shows the impact of good education about civil courage. By learning about examples of unselfish human kindness, and of those who acted in accordance with their deepest moral beliefs, young people become aware of the possibility of choice in their own lives.

We must do more to promote these stories of goodness performed in the face of evil. Given their moral value and educa-tional importance, stories of the upstander deserve to be archived and cherished in the form of books, museum exhibits, and other tributes in public spaces. Any place dedicated to extolling civil courage can inspire hope and help prevent future con-flicts, as they offer people of all ages the chance to reflect on individual and group responsibility in the face of repressive regimes and their imposed brutalities. Sto-ries of civil courage and kindness restore faith in humanity and remind citizens that in each of us lie seeds of goodness: Even if we have been unkind or unethical at one point, in the next moment we may find the strength to turn this around. Most of all, these stories force us to ask ourselves whether we will remain bystanders to the world around us, or whether we, too, will be upstanders for a better present and future.

Svetlana Broz, M.D., was born in Belgrade in 1955, the granddaughter of Josip Broz Tito, the leader of the former Yugoslavia. A cardiologist by profession, she is also the founder and director of the Sarajevo office of the international NGO Gardens of the Righteous Worldwide (www.gariwo.org), which educates youth on the topic of civil courage. She is the author of the books Good People in an Evil Time (published in five languages, English translation by Ellen Elias-Bursa) and Having What It Takes (edited by Thomas Butler) and numerous articles. She is also the editor of the forth-coming Anthology of Civil Courage.


By learning about examples of unselfish human kindness, young people become aware of the possibility

of choice in their own lives.


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bullying in schools is now widely recognized as a serious social problem that must be addressed if we care about the well-being of bullied children. Thus far, however, attempts to reduce bullying in schools have largely failed.

A 2004 comprehensive evaluation of the effectiveness of anti-bullying programs in schools around the world (Bullying in Schools: How Successful Can Interventions Be? edited by Peter K. Smith, Debra Pepler, and Ken Rigby) found that achievements so far have been modest at best. In some cases, the interventions have been totally unsuccessful.

Why have anti-bullying programs met with so little success? We suggest two important reasons.

The first is that educators have con-centrated on encouraging teachers and counselors to watch what is happening and take strong disciplinary action when bul-lying has occurred. Unfortunately, school authorities are commonly unaware of what is going on. This is not to blame them. It

is simply to recognize that bullying goes on in the company of peers and rarely in the company of teachers. Children see it happening, but the teachers do not. Only occasionally do students tell.

The second reason why anti-bullying programs often fail is because they are not effectively supported by children. One of the startling facts to emerge from the research into children’s behavior in recent years has been the almost ubiquitous presence of other children when bullying takes place in schools. We can no longer conceive of bullying at school as a covert activity, engaged in guiltily when there is no one around. On the contrary, research has found that school bullies glory in the presence of an audience. It provides theater. To a remarkable extent, the watchers either enjoy the spectacle or watch in a curious but largely disengaged manner. The few who may object are in a small minority.

Yet some do object. And here is another remarkable fact. On those rare occasions

when a witness does object to bullying, there is a good chance that the bullying will stop. Indeed, several researchers have reported that bystander objections effec-tively discourage bullying at least half the time.

Educators are now beginning to think that promoting positive bystander inter-vention may be a more effective way to counter bullying. To succeed, anti-bully-ing programs must enlist the support of children. But, as we have noted, children typically just stand by and watch bullying take place. Why don’t they act? More to the point, how can they be encouraged to act and to act effectively? We need to know what students typically do when they’re bystanders in the presence of bullying, and why.

In our own research, we set out to cast some light on children’s motives by showing them a video of different kinds of bullying, then asking them what they would do in each situation. We found that

playground heroesWho can stop bullying?

Not just parents and teachers, argue Ken Rigby and Bruce Johnson.


A BYSTANDER’S STORY

“That’s Just Messed Up”

Despite pressures and fears that often prevent them from act-ing, many children still do stand up to bullies. Let’s Get Real

is a 35-minute documentary in which kids talk about bullying; many of them explain how they were bystanders but chose to help a bullying victim. One of those children is an eighth grader named Paola, whose testimony in the film is transcribed below.

“ We were going to get our lunch. There was this guy who was over-weight, and they were making fun of him. They called him a geek and a dork, and they told him that in his face. And I was right next to him.

“ We didn’t want to say anything, but then we realized that it was kind of messed up that these guys were making fun of him. And I felt really bad. I’m like, ‘That’s just messed up. You shouldn’t be doing that. You don’t know him.’ [But] this was the first time I had actually stood up for a stranger, and I was like, Should I do it or shouldn’t I?

“ And then… I said [to myself], ‘Just go in, because it’s not right.’ And the [bully] was like, ‘What are you going to do? You’re just a girl.’

“ And that really pissed me off. I was like, ‘You know what, just because you’re a guy doesn’t mean you’re stronger than me. No, don’t call him a geek or a dork because you don’t know him. And don’t be sexist, neither.’ And the guy was like, ‘Oh, I’m not being sexist or anything like that. Shut up, you ho.’

“ And I was so mad. I was so like, ‘You know what, you better go tell that kid that you’re sorry because I’m going to go tell the principal. And it’s not cool of you to say that, because what if he starts to believe in that?’

“ So he went to apologize to that kid and that kid felt good. I know he did. He’s like, ‘Thank you very much,’ and so I’m like, ‘Yeah, sure.’”

To order or find out more about Let’s Get Real, see www.womedia.org, or contact the film’s producers, Women’s Educational Media, at 415-641-4616.

while a small proportion would support the bullying and many would ignore it, a substantial number of children believed they would act to support the victim. Their good intentions—which ranged from simple moral justifications to the desire for reciprocal benefit to feelings of empathy or close identification with the victim—can be encouraged and lever-aged to help stop bullying.

We now have useful insights into what children think and are prepared to do when they witness bullying in the school playground. This knowledge can help us to devise more effective ways of addressing the problem, such as catalyz-ing classroom discussions about bullying and rehearsing with students what they might say when they see bullying take place. In these ways, we might influence bystanders to act more positively in the face of bullying.

The young bystanderTo find out what children think when they witness bullying, we made a video of cartoons showing different kinds of bul-lying—both physical and verbal—with bystanders present. (See figures on the next page.) We showed the video to school children in upper elementary and lower high school classes in South Australia. As part of what we called the International Bystander Project, col-leagues showed the same video to similar groups of school children in England and South Africa, and, with appropriate translations, to children in Italy, Israel, and Bangladesh.

When asked what they would person-ally do as a bystander in each situation, children in the different countries responded in much the same way. Most of the children were divided between those who believed they would act in some way to support the victim and those who would ignore him.

The reasons given for not helping the victim fell into four categories.

The first was that it was “not my concern.” Some children wrote: “It is not my problem if someone I don’t know is getting picked on”; “It isn’t nice to intrude on someone’s business”; “I am just an onlooker”; “They can solve it all by them-selves”; and “None of my business.”

A second reason was fear of the consequences: “The people may turn on ME!”; “If I got involved I would probably get bashed”; “I would be scared it would

”“playground heroes


happen to me”; “It might be embarrassing”; and “I don’t want to be a ‘sissy’ by telling a teacher.”

Thirdly, some felt that the responsibility is (or should be) with the victim. “He [the victim] should stick up for himself.” “Most people can take care of themselves and sometimes the [victims] deserve it.” Older children were more likely to feel unsympa-thetic toward victims and blame them for being victimized.

Fourthly, some argued that personal action to stop the bullying would be use-less, or might even make matters worse. “They would not take any notice of me,” wrote one child. “If I ignored it, it might stop, because they are not getting any attention,” wrote another.

Sadly, some children—and some adults too—approve of bullying. Some find the violence or the possibility of violence attractive. “I love to watch fights.” “Every kid likes to have fun and I am part of it.” In some cases there is sincere admiration for the bullies. “The person insulting the other person is cool and ROCKS.” Several seemed to have genuinely sadistic motives: “The person pushing [the victim] is me or my friend and you gotta be cruel.” “Some people deserve to get their heads kicked in because they are dickheads.” Some believed that supporting the bully was the safer option: “Everyone would be on the insulter’s side so I’m not going on the insulted side because I would get drilled.”

Fortunately, children with these atti-tudes are in the minority.

Behind the good intentions Some children believed they would try to support the victim. We learned from the children what lay behind their good inten-

tions. In many cases, children gave a simple moral explanation. They said that bullying was simply “wrong,” so then acting to stop the bullying was “right.” These children wrote: “It feels like the right thing to do”; “It is wrong to harass someone like that”; “It is not right to bully.”

Some gave no morally explicit justifi-cation. They saw themselves as helping victims because it was their basic nature to do so, expressed in such statements as these: “I am not a mean person”; “I always like to help others”; and “I don’t know why, I just would.”

The responses of some students were related to empathic feelings, such as concern or pity, which they had toward victims: “I feel sorry for them and do not want them to get hurt;” “I don’t like see-ing people’s feelings being hurt”; “They [victims] are usually the ones who can’t stand up for themselves;” “They need sup-port—they may be scared”; “I can imagine how the person [the victim] would feel.”

Some closely identified with the victim. These children’s intentions appear to be strongly related to their own feelings about having been bullied, or their sense that they would appreciate being helped if they were bullied. “If I got pushed over I wouldn’t like it.” “I have been in similar situations and I know what it feels like to be bullied.” “It has happened to me before and no one stuck up for me and that made me feel angry.” “I don’t want other people to go through what I went through in Year 3.” “If it was me, I would like somebody to help me.”

Another group was looking for a recip-rocal benefit. “If I helped someone they might help me,” wrote one child. “It is nice to help and I would probably make a new friend if I did,” wrote another.

For a few, helping the victim was condi-tional: “I would support friends if they were being insulted but if I didn’t know them I would ignore it. If he was my friend I would stick up for him.”

Finally, several students saw the pos-sibility of gaining higher status through a heroic gesture. “I could become a hero!” wrote a child.

Despite the good intentions expressed by children in our study, previous stud-ies have found that not nearly as many children actually support bullying victims in real life. It seems that in the actual situa-tion, the good intentions would not always be carried out. In addition, our finding that high-school children were more prepared to ignore what was going on is consistent with earlier research findings indicating that in the early teenage years, children become increasingly unsympathetic to vic-tims of bullying and more likely to blame them for not standing up for themselves.

There is clearly no monolithic pattern to how children think they should act when they witness bullying behavior. As our analyses show, there is a wide spectrum of attitudes and beliefs underlying different behavioral intentions. And no doubt many children are conflicted about what they should or should not do. Such children are highly susceptible to influence from others.

We are apt to speak knowingly of a child’s “peer group,” as if we know what “it” thought and what its influences are. If so, we are wrong. In our study, children were asked to say what they thought their friends expected them to do when they saw somebody being bullied at school. Some indicated that they felt that their friends would expect them to do nothing; a few thought that their friends would expect


Examples of the physical and verbal bullying depicted in the authors’ video.


them to join in the bullying! A substantial proportion felt that their friends expected them to help the victim. It became obvious that it is more accurate to speak of “peer groups” rather than “the” peer group, with its largely negative connotation.

We took another step. This time we cor-related judgments of what children thought their friends expected them to do as bystanders witnessing bullying with what they themselves said they would do. Result: Those who expressed an intention to help the victim were in most cases the ones who thought their friends expected them to do so. Of course, these pro-active students may have been deluded, but we think not. Children by and large know what their friends are thinking.

Adult influenceBut what about adults? What influence can they have?

We asked the children what they thought their mothers, fathers, and teach-ers expected of them when they witnessed bullying behavior at school. On the whole, the children said they thought these adults expected them to help the victim, though there were some variations in what exactly the children believed was expected of them.

Importantly, these variations did not correlate with what the children indicated they were actually prepared to do. For instance, children who thought their par-ents expected them to help the victim were no more likely to say that they would do so than other children. Apparently, neither mothers nor fathers nor teachers were hav-ing any significant impact on the children’s bystander behavior. This supports what many social psychologists and some devel-opmental psychologists have told us. By the time children are in upper primary school, parental and teacher influence on their children’s peer-related behavior is practi-cally nonexistent.

This last finding must be painful to parents who want to believe that they can guide their children in the right way to behave. It is disconcerting to teachers who like to think that if they earnestly continue to tell children how they should treat each other—“With respect, please!”—that they will succeed. This is not to say that parents and teachers can never help children learn to cooperate and feel empathic toward others. Of course, many do. But our finding does suggest the limits of merely telling children how we adults expect them to behave with peers.

What educators can do Once we recognize that the most effective influence on children’s bystander behavior is what they think their friends expect of them (not what their teacher or parents think), we can begin to devise ways in which positive peer influence can make itself felt.

What teachers can do must be indi-rect. It must also seek to leverage the widespread good intentions that we have documented, so that children can be encouraged to object to bullying when the teacher is not around. We reason that once children know how many of their peers feel about bullying and why they think it should be stopped, there is a good chance that some of them—especially those “on the fence”—will be influenced by what they have learned.

Our suggestion is this. Begin by showing children pictures or videos of bystanders witnessing bullying, and pose the question of what they, as bystanders, would do about it. Then ask them to give their reasons for their choice of action. Some teachers may prefer to have the children write down their answers. Our findings suggest that many of the children will make statements that carry considerable moral influence. A skillful teacher can ensure that these state-ments are heard.

At the same time, it would be foolish to ignore the misgivings that some children will have about intervening in potentially risky situations. We have found that some of the most hesitant children are ones who have been bullied in the past. Teach-ers must acknowledge that there can be grounds for caution. It is sensible to identify and discuss situations that may be danger-ous, and explain that it may sometimes be wise to get outside help for the person who is being bullied—for instance, by informing a teacher.

Teachers can consider ways in which the risk of intervening can be minimized. For example, children can state their disap-

proval of what is going on rather than getting physically involved in any fight-ing. And especially, they can encourage their friends to speak up and voice their opposition to the bullying. Students may rehearse what they might say when they witness bullying and—if appropriate for the group—they may even take part in role playing exercises that simulate bystander situations.

For a bystander program to make an impact, educators must persist with it. A one-off session with a class is not likely to be effective. We strongly recommend that students be asked to report back to the class on their experiences, good and bad, after they have acted to discourage bullying. In this way the teacher, as well as the children, learn about what can be done to translate good intentions into effective action.

Promoting bystander intervention is not risk free. The impetuous will make mistakes. Enemies may be made as well as friends. Being a hero can be close to feeling a fool. By being thoughtful and learning from experience, one can minimize the risk, but never eliminate it. Yet what is the alternative? Edmund Burke identified it: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Ken Rigby, Ph.D., is an adjunct professor in the School of Education at the University of South Australia. He consults nationally and internationally on problems of school bullying and has published extensively in this area (see www.education.unisa.edu.au). His forthcoming book on school bul-lying, Children and Bullying: What Parents and Educators Can Do, will be published by Blackwell in 2007. Bruce Johnson, Ph.D., is the dean of research education in the Divi-sion of Education, Arts, and Social Sciences at the University of South Australia, and a key researcher in the Hawke Research Centre at that university.


Once children know how their peers feel about bullying, there is a good chance that some of them will be influenced by what they have learned.


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it was one of those small encounters that lodges in the mind like a pebble in the shoe: A few years ago, walking back from the market at dusk, I heard a muffled keen-ing coming from a pile of discarded coats on the sidewalk 20 yards ahead. The sound became more intense as I approached, a kind of Doppler effect, until I made out a man about my age, wrapped in layers of outerwear, loudly demanding a handout. I gave him a dollar and, for good measure, dug into my bag for an apple. But my con-science was hardly appeased.

Street people. The homeless. Truth be told, most of us find them an annoyance. They barge into public space (sometimes their smell, supernally potent, intrudes first), interrupting our train of thought or flow of conversation. Haven’t they brought this on themselves in some way (in some way we clearly haven’t)? Why don’t they get a job, bootstrap themselves out of purgatory? We avert our eyes, feign sudden deafness, sidestep them as they sprawl at

our feet. We’re as eager to cross paths with them as we would be with Marley’s Ghost.

That I had barely helped the man had a sting of irony, as I’d just begun researching a new book on empathy, altruism, and com-passion. Browsing for quotes, I’d stumbled on Works of Love, a tome by the alternately cranky and transcendent 19th century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, whose moral scolding had instantly gotten under my skin. When he mocked that person who is “never among the more lowly”; who “will go about with closed eyes… when he moves around in the human throng”; and jeered the existential snob who “thinks he exists only for the distinguished, that he is to live only in the alliance of their circles,” well… I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know whom he was talking about.

In fact, I was anticipating a rather gala break in my writing schedule: a trip to Cannes and then on to a farmhouse in glorious Provence, an offer from a jetset-ting filmmaker buddy I could hardly refuse.

But then another invitation had suddenly cropped up in the same calendar slot, this one from a group

called the Zen Peacemaker Order, to go on what they called a “street retreat.” With the back of my neck still prickling under Kierkegaard’s gaze (to say nothing of my editor’s), I decided to stay on the ground. Literally. The retreat rules were simple: Hit the pavement unbathed and unshaven, without money or change of clothes, joining for the better part of a week the ranks of those whom life had kicked to the curb. A sojourn in the land of ain’t got nothin’, got nothin’ to lose might, I thought, pierce my bystander’s armor.

It’s a spiritual truism that trading places with the less fortunate, psychologically if not literally, can be a powerful motive for doing unto others as you’d have them do unto you. The Bible Code doesn’t require decryption by a helium-cooled supercom-puter. The sacred heart of Jesus simply means that I don’t just pity the unfortu-nate—rather, I am the unfortunate: the outcast, the sick, the naked and hungry. The high-living rake of Assisi who would become St. Francis had an impulse one

Why do we

To find empathy for the homeless, Marc Ian Barasch put himself in their shoes for a week.

walk on by?


day to hand his fine coat to a beggar and, donning the other’s rags, began his great conversion. Even capitalist godfather Adam Smith, that apostle of self-interest, once suggested that true compassion means “I not only change circumstances with you, but I change persons and characters.” Why? In order that, he wrote in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, my feelings might become “entirely upon your account, and not in the least upon my own.” This swap-ping of self and other, says the Buddhist sage Shantideva, leads to genuine compas-sion: “An attitude of wanting to protect others as oneself, and to protect all that belongs to them with the same care as if it were one’s own.”

Not that I expected a week of contrived homelessness to produce, via some spiritual warp-drive, a saintly quantum leap. But I’d at least walk a mile in the other guy’s moc-casins and see how far I got.

Bearing witnessThe street retreats are the brainchild of Bernie Glassman. A bearded, portly former aerospace engineer ordained as a Buddhist roshi, Bernie had been looking for ways to integrate spiritual practice with compas-sionate social action. Sometime in the 1980s, he decided to spend a few months walking aimlessly around the inner-city Bronx neighborhood that abutted his meditation center, hanging out, talking with people in his cannily receptive way, listening to their problems. Out of this had grown, as naturally and prolifically as a zucchini patch, a sprawling multimil-lion-dollar social organization serving the rebuked and the scorned.

First there was the Greyston Bakery, which employed people just getting out of prison or off the street. The business grew, eventually snagging a contract to make brownies for Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. But it soon came smack up against the endemic problems of the neighbor-hood. People missed work because of drug problems. Batches of dough were ruined because employees lacked basic math skills to measure ingredients or the read-ing skills to decipher labels on cans. But each problem had suggested, after trial and error, its own solution. The Greyston Mandala that emerged from Bernie’s first street-scuffing walkabout now trains, employs, houses, and provides health ser-vices to hundreds of the formerly margin-al, as well as offering care and housing to people with AIDS on the site of a former Catholic nunnery.

When Bernie’s 55th birthday rolled around, rather than resting on his laurels, he decided to spend a few days sitting homeless on the steps of the Capitol, figuring out what next to do with his life. During what turned out to be Washing-ton, D.C.’s coldest, snowiest week in half a century, he dreamed up the multifaith Peacemaker Order, a spiritual path based on just bearing witness and seeing what happened.

“When we bear witness,” he wrote, “when we become the situation—home-lessness, poverty, illness, violence, death—then right action arises by itself. We don’t have to worry about what to do.

We don’t have to figure out solutions ahead of time…. It’s as simple as giving a hand to someone who stumbles, or picking up a child who has fallen on the floor.”

You could say, Witness, schmitness. Fine for Bernie, with his track record of weaving straw into gold. But if he hadn’t recommended it, I’d be hard put to justify my week of taking to the streets in a bum costume, as if I and my fellow retreatants didn’t have somewhere better to go. What I had to tell myself was, at least for this interlude, there would be no “better,” and no worse.

The haunted streetAnd so I find myself living on the streets of Denver, dressed in ratty, stinking clothes, a toothbrush in my pocket and a week’s worth of stubble on my cold-reddened cheeks. I’m hoping to discover some way to be a little less full of myself; to see if more kindness might arise if I persuade Mr. Ego to move out for a week.

But what I find arising is my innate irritability. I can be impatient, and home-lessness involves lots of waiting: waiting for a soup kitchen to open, then waiting for your number to be called for a meal; waiting for the rain or snow to let up, or for a cop to stop looking your way. It’s a dif-ferent map of the world: Which Starbucks has a security guard who’ll let you use the bathroom? How long can you linger in this place or that before you’re rousted? It’s pretty much a stray dog’s life, sniffing for a bone to gnaw, a tree to piss on, knowing nobody wants you, wary of the company you keep.

And what to make of my new company? My friend Søren K., in his tough-old-bird fashion, argued against harboring any delusions that “by loving some people, relatives and friends, you would be loving the neighbor.” No, he squawked, the real point is “to frighten you out of the beloved haunts of preferential love.” Most of my new neighbors are haunted. Life has failed them, or they’ve failed it. A tall, stringy young man with lank, black-dyed hair, tattooed like a Maori, tells me, “If you see Sherry, tell her Big John’s back from Oklahoma.” His eyes have the jittery glint of crank, each pupil a spinning disco ball, fitfully sparkling. An alcoholic Indian vet yanks open his shirt to show me his scars—the roundish puckers from shrapnel, the short, telegraphic dashes from ritual piercing at a Sun Dance—weeping over a life he no longer wants.

An angry-looking man approaches me to ask—to demand—that I give him a plastic fork, purpose unknown. When I demur, he stalks over to the dumpster and scrabbles through it unproductively.

“I’m sorry,” I say.“I’ll just bet you are,” he snarls, then

raises both middle fingers, staring into my eyes with cold fury.

I can’t say I’m pleased to meet him, but WWKD: What Would Kierkegaard Do? “Root out all equivocation and fastidious-ness in loving them!” Sir, yessir. The Bud-dhist sage Atisha recommended a prayer upon encountering those folks who mess with our minds: When I see beings of a nega-tive disposition, or those oppressed by negativity or pain, may I, as if finding a treasure, consider them precious.

Every cerebral word of this homily is not running through my head as I step toward my new neighbor with a little faux-nod of appreciation, hoping he hasn’t stashed a ball-peen hammer in his coat. But he backs away, lips curled, then turns and runs,

I thought a sojourn in the land of ain’t got nothin’, got nothin’ to lose might pierce my bystander’s armor.



pursued by some host of invisibles. At least, I tell myself, I’ve managed to become more curious about him than repulsed, mind-ful that the more I amp up my judgment of others, the more I empower that ogre of criticism that grinds my own bones to make its bread. Really, I don’t know how these guys drove their lives into the ditch, or how to winch them out. I try to stay present, feeling my heart’s systole and diastole, its sympathies opening, closing, opening, closing.

The debt of loveI’m willing to practice extending those sympathies to my street neighbors. But I’m not nearly as enthusiastic about doing what the Zen Peacemaker Order refers to as “begging practice.” The thought horri-fies me. Sure, I’ve done that high-class begging known as fundraising, palm outstretched for checks written out to high-minded projects. But I’ve always felt it was worth the other person’s while; there were good deeds to show for it. Here on the street I, the beggar, have nothing to offer the beggee. There is no mutual exchange, just an imbal-ance of boons. I’m a walking bundle of needs, and it galls me.

Besides, it isn’t easy to get those needs met. Faces turn to stone at my plea for food money. Eyes flicker side-ways, ahead to the middle distance, to the ground, anywhere but the empty space where I’m standing. The Confu-cians of the Sung Dynasty compared not feeling compassion for a stranger to not feeling that your own foot’s caught fire, and too many of us seem to have gone numb. (I think of an acquaintance of mine, a much-awarded designer of leafy town squares in the New Urbanist style. “Of course,” he once said to me rue-fully, “the more open space, the bigger the quotient of ‘bummage.’”)

Bummage I am. I supplicate downtown pedestrians, dauntingly busy on their way from here to there, clutching purses and shopping bags and cell phones and lov-ers’ waists. I recognize the filmy bubble of self-concept that surrounds them, that protective aura of specialness. How often do most of us secretly say to ourselves that we’re smarter, stronger, taller, more charm-ing than average; have a cooler job, a more lovely spouse, more accomplished children; that we are (somehow) more spiritual, even more selfless? Anything is grist for the mill of selfhood versus otherness, of the gourmet-flavored me versus plain-vanilla

everyone else. I, too, have achieved my differentiation at some cost and consider-able effort; even here, hugging the ground, I resist inhabiting the same universe as the full-time failures.

But I’m already there in one respect: My panhandling talents are nil. Each rejection thuds like a body blow. I can see the little comic-strip thought balloon spring from people’s brows—Get a job; I work! It occurs to me to just forget it. Though we’ve agreed that during the week we’d each scrape up $3.50 for the bus fare home, throwing any extra into the kitty for the homeless shelter, I think, Why put myself through it? I’ ll send a check when I get home.

But I’m hungry now. I’m also starting to realize that there’s more to “begging practice” than meets the eye. Roshi Bernie

Glassman has explained it with disarming simplicity: “When we don’t ask, we don’t let others give. When we fear rejection, we don’t let generosity arise.” I realize that the street, much like a meditation cushion, has put my issues on parade, and this begging routine’s got them goose-stepping smartly past the reviewing stand. There’s the Humiliation Battalion. The Fear of Rejection Brigade. The Undeserv-ing Auxiliary. And of course, the Judgment Detachment—for I find I’m even judging my potential donors (are they good enough to give me a dollar?).

My profound reluctance to ask passersby for help feels not unlike my aversion to call-ing friends when I’m needful in other ways, those times when I’m feeling sad, lost, lonely, bereft. I prize autonomy; I’m overly

proud of it. I don’t want to owe people for my well-being. Or just maybe I don’t want to owe them my love. I wonder suddenly if I’m not rejecting gratitude itself, that spiritual 3-in-1 oil said to open the creaki-est gate around the heart? Aren’t we all in debt—to our parents, teachers, friends, and loved ones—for our very existence?

But dear Søren Kierkegaard thought even this was a crock. Sure, he said, we think the person who is loved owes a debt of gratitude to the one who loves them. There is an expectation that it should be repaid in kind, on installment, “reminis-cent,” he says sarcastically, “of an actual bookkeeping arrangement.” Instead, he turns the whole thing on its head: “No, the one who loves runs into debt; in feeling himself gripped by love, he feels this as being in an infinite debt. Amazing!”

Amazing. It is his most radical proposi-tion: We owe those who elicit love from us for allowing us to be overfilled with the stuff. We owe a debt to those who suffer because they draw forth our tenderness. (Do I think that by avoiding others’ suffer-ing, I can hoard my stash of good feelings and not get bummed out? The “helper’s high” phenomenon suggests the opposite: It’s giving that turns on the juice, taps us into the infinite current.) Giving and taking start to seem less like zero-sum transac-tions than some universal love-circuitry, where what goes around not only comes around but comes back redoubled.

Still, “How’d you like to enter into Kierkegaard’s infinite debt of love?” is not going to win Year’s Best Panhandling Line. I ask a stylish young guy—No War: Not in Our Name button on his fawn-colored coat, canvas messenger bag in muted gray—if he can spare a little change for food. He calls out chidingly over his shoulder, “I don’t give on the street.” Fair enough. But the bank building’s LED thermometer reads 25 degrees, and the sun still hasn’t gone down. I haven’t had dinner. Sleeping on the street is a frigid proposition, and body heat requires calories. Then I realize I’m judging him and everyone else, defeating the whole purpose of the exercise. I make a point to mentally bless all comers and goers.

I approach a bearded guy in a fringed suede jacket. He declines, but hangs around as if waiting for someone. A few minutes later, hearing me unsuccessfully petition a half dozen more people, he comes over and hands me two dollars, cau-tioning sotto voce, “Don’t tell anyone I gave it to you,” as if worried I’d alert a Fagin’s gang of accomplices.

A man who’s just passed me with a curt No pivots abruptly, yanked like a puppet by his heartstrings, and walks back with a green bill.

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I’ve now streamlined my pitch: “I’m sleeping on the street tonight, I’m hungry. I wonder if you could help me out at all?” Most people’s eyes still slam down like steel shutters over a storefront at closing time, but then, “… Could you help me out?” and a man who’s just passed me with a curt No pivots abruptly, yanked like a puppet by his heartstrings, and walks back with a green bill. “On second thought, I can.” And I see in that moment how much more effort it takes to resist the raw tug of each other’s existence.

I strike out another 20 or 30 times before a crisp-looking gent crosses my palm with silver. “Thanks so much, it’s chilly out tonight,” I mumble, surprised after so many averted gazes. “It is cold,” he says sympa-thetically, and those three words restore my faith.

Small change A week later, back home again, I’m delight-ed to be sleeping in my own bed. Bathed, shaved, fed, dressed, I take a walk on the mall with a friend. He looks at me askance as I press a dollar into a panhandler’s palm and then, seeing how browbeaten the man

looks, peel off another two and chat with him for a while.

I’m trying to become insufferably virtu-ous, I tell my friend. How am I doing?

Great, he replies, you’re getting on my nerves.

These days, I give money to the people with cardboard signs who stake out corners on trafficked streets, remembering when I was stranded once on the highway, having to scare up a ride with my own magic-markered plea. One guy comes up to the window to recite his story as my car idles at a light. He’s a former truck driver with a neck injury, he says, saving up for surgery. He seems utterly sincere, though I’m not sure that matters: I know he must have his reasons. I hand him a bill and drive off. Then, feeling suddenly touched, I circle the block and cut recklessly through two lanes of traffic to give him another. “For your medical fund,” I yell, practically hurling a tenner at him to beat the light. “God bless you, you and your family,” he yells after me; and yes, I think, he’s for real, and yes, I also think, how Dickensian: Oh, kind sir. But I also mentally thank him for helping me sink deeper into that debt that swallows all

others and makes them small—small, and of no consequence.

I won’t claim I’ve evolved that much. Not in a week or two; not in a few months. Sure, I help out, sometimes, at the local soup kitchen; kick in for the anti-homeless-ness coalition. But I do feel as if my inner pockets have been turned inside out, shak-ing loose some small change in my life. I’ve developed an ineluctable soft spot. I can’t help but notice the people at the margins, the ones who used to be the extras in my movie. Knowing a little of how they feel makes me an easy touch. The money I give out sometimes mounts up, 20, 30 bucks a month, unburdening the wallet, filling the heart’s purse. Until I figure out what I can do to really change things—or until the world becomes a different place—this feels better than okay.

Marc Ian Barasch is a former editor at Psychology Today. His previous work includes Healing Dreams and Remarkable Recovery. His most recent book is Field Notes on the Compassionate Life: A Search for the Soul of Kindness (www.compassionatelife.com), from which this essay is adapted.



in his memoir Dispatches from the Edge, CNN’s disaster-chasing correspondent Anderson Cooper describes covering Hurricane Katrina. On the Gulf Coast, he endured the wind and water, and saw the bodies of those killed by the storm or drowned in the flooding. The tone of his descriptions is primarily that of an observ-er—a bystander, angered and shocked, but still a bystander.

“None of us [ journalists] talks about what we’ve seen,” he writes. “We focus on how to put the story together, which pic-tures will work, which sound bites to use. I suppose it’s easier that way. Each of us deals with the dead differently. Some don’t look, pretending they’re not there. Others get angry, sickened by what they see.”

In his reporting for CNN, Cooper adhered obediently to the journalistic stan-

dards of objectivity and non-intervention. If he and his crew offered help to the storm’s victims, he doesn’t say so in his memoir. He does say that another CNN reporter loaned a boat to some New Orleans police officers to help them rescue their families.

But as Cooper’s book makes plain, Katrina did challenge his commitment to journalistic detachment, especially by fueling anger at the authorities who failed to respond quickly after the storm. Cooper writes of how he changed during the crisis: “I’m not shocked anymore by the bod-ies, the blunders. You can’t stay stunned forever. The anger doesn’t go away, but it settles somewhere behind your heart; it deepens into resolve. I feel connected to what’s around me, no longer just observ-ing.” Though carried out safely within the conventions of journalism, his reporting,

and that of many other journalists, power-fully imprinted Katrina’s horrors on the minds of audiences worldwide.

Over the course of his reporting, Cooper appears to have been transformed from a passive bystander to a stakeholder in the story he was covering. The tension between these two identities raises ques-tions that journalists have searched their souls about for generations: When does the reporter put down a notebook to try to change the outcome of a tense situation? Or is it enough simply to describe what others are doing? When should a photogra-pher drop the camera and intervene? When is snapping the picture a way of interven-ing, rather than just a form of recording? Does the risk of an emotional wound bear on whether the journalist should act or stand by?

Journalists are bystanders to the world around them, often witnessing people in great distress. When should they put down their cameras and notebooks and help their subjects? Roger Simpson explains when journalists should get involved —and when they shouldn’t.

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Men and women in the news business raise these ethical questions daily, circle around their choices, and typically return to work somewhere short of a confident answer. They struggle in part because their most decent impulses are often at odds with the business of journalism and the “objective” journalistic ideals imparted to them in school and in the newsroom. Many reporters don’t have access to a definition of “ journalist” that allows them to be ready to act when needed, while still respecting the obligation of the press to report accu-rately and fairly on events.

Yet the history of journalism is complex and contains many competing guidelines for when to stand by and when to stand up, suggesting possibilities that many of us have forgotten. My ideal journalists put aside the camera or notebook when there’s a reasonable chance their actions will help others or prevent harm. In the process, they can recognize the symptoms of stress and emotional injury in themselves and others, and they can better convey the emotional dimension of their stories. Getting involved isn’t just good for the journalists and their subjects. It can also be good for journalism and the public.

A thousand bulldozers“You have the power of a thousand bulldozers,” a New Orleans resident told Anderson Cooper. “I don’t think it’s true, of course,” Cooper later wrote. No two com-ments could speak more clearly about our confused expectations of journalists and the burden that confusion places on them. The confusion rests in large part on the news industry’s demands that its employ-ees stand aloof from what they cover—an effort to assure audiences of reporters’ fairness and objectivity. The demands have been effective. The “dominant stance of journalism today,” writes Maxwell McCombs, a leading scholar of the social role of journalism, is a “professional detach-ment that eschews any role” other than observation.

There is another, less noble-sounding, rationale for journalistic detachment: News organizations have unforgiving production needs. Deadlines are critical and failures to meet them are costly. Even in an industry that markets novelty and the unexpected, news processing depends on routines of staffing, production, and presentation. And veteran editors have seen the consequences of some staffers’ zeal to be good Samaritans or activists. Such digressions cost time and money and often don’t yield news. Strictly

from a business perspective, journalists’ detachment makes sense.

In recent years, however, detachment and objectivity have come under sharp attack—most powerfully from advocates of “civic” or “public” journalism, who argue that if media outlets want to rebuild their declining audiences and public trust, journalists must actively contribute to com-munity life rather than serve as detached spectators. “As inherent participants in the process, we should do our work in ways that aid in the resolution of public problems by fostering broad citizen engagement,” said W. Davis “Buzz” Merritt Jr., a former

editor of The Wichita Eagle and a chief proponent of civic journalism. Honest disclosure of opinions and interests is a better guide to trustworthiness than far less transparent claims of objectivity and detachment, say the supporters of civic journalism.

Civic journalism has tried to reposition reporters as participants in the stories they cover, but I propose another reason to chal-lenge the model of journalistic detachment: its immediate and negative effects on the psychology of the journalist, as well as on the quality of his or her coverage.

A decade ago, it was rare to hear some-one in emergency and disaster professions speak of a reporter or television camera operator as a “first responder.” That’s no longer the case. Today journalists are often among the first on scenes of natural and human-made disasters. Reporters and photographers embedded in military units

in Iraq, for instance, found it impossible to stay detached from the soldiers they covered, especially when they’ve shared experiences of death and injury.

Although we still don’t have a good measure of emotional trauma among working journalists, a recent study of war correspondents by Anthony Feinstein, a University of Toronto psychiatrist, found that nearly one-third of those he stud-ied suffered symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder. For other journalists, those who work in our home-towns, severe trauma may range from five to ten percent—which is comparable to the population at large—all the way up to the levels found among war reporters.

Exposure to life-threatening situations or witnessing death, injury, and destruction can take its toll on any journalist’s psyche. The effects can range from short-term unease to lasting symptoms, including flashbacks, sleeplessness, heightened anxi-ety, and avoidance of anything that might serve as a reminder of a traumatic event. Hearing the stories of suffering from direct victims of violence also may cause these symptoms. And these symptoms, in turn, may directly affect the way that news is gathered, perceived, and reported.

Roger Rosenblatt, a veteran journalist, described this effect on fellow journalists after he covered the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Journalists respond to carnage at first with shock and “perhaps a twinge of guilty excitement.” Then they get bogged down in the routine nature of killing. Finally, “embittered, spiteful, and inadequate to their work, they curse out their bosses back home for not according them respect; they hate the people on whom they report. Worst of all, they don’t allow themselves to enter the third stage, in which everything gets sadder and wiser, worse and strangely better.”

In traumatic circumstances, engagement may contribute to the resilience and mental health of news workers, whereas detach-ment can exacerbate the effects of trauma. Failure to help others in times of distress and disaster is not only an evasion of moral responsibility. For many, guilt will serve to tax their energies and emotional well-being. Denying oneself opportunities for action could contribute to personal alienation, excessive use of drugs and alcohol, and pes-simism about life in general. Detachment and a belief in a lack of personal agency in troubling situations feed despair and may affect the way news is reported. When a journalist’s worldview is altered by pes-

Getting involved isn’t just good for the journalists and their subjects. It can also be good for journalism and the public.

Engagement



simism, the stories told can reinforce that sense of danger or risk.

In short, there are times when journal-ists must engage with the stories they cover, for the good of their craft, them-selves, and the subjects of their stories. But there are also times when they must step back, allow events to unfold, and do their jobs. Where do we draw those lines? When should journalists intervene and when is it best to keep to the traditional tasks of taking photographs and gathering informa-tion? These are questions of concern not just for reporters, but for anyone who wants to understand what they’re seeing, hear-ing, and reading about the world. Here are some rules of engagement.

Intervene when first on the scene, others can be helped, and you know how to helpWhen an interior bridge in a Kansas City hotel collapsed, a journalist who reached the scene ahead of emergency workers turned immediately to helping the victims. In this and similar situations—a drowning child, a fire victim who can be rescued—action is not morally optional. The journal-ist, like any human being, should prevent or minimize harm if it is in her or his capacity to do so.

In disasters such as the Gulf Coast hurricanes of 2005 and the South Asian earthquakes and tsunami in December of 2004, journalists on the scene witnessed overwhelming evidence of pain, injury, and death, and many were troubled that they could do little to help. Yet journal-ists did pitch in to help unload vehicles, carry boxes, hand out packages, and listen to accounts of suffering—all examples of critical and morally defensible interven-tion. When the need is overwhelming and little is being done, small actions may keep the journalist in a moral and emotionally healthy relationship to the event she is covering.

Do not intervene in situations in which you might endanger a life, including your own There are times when journalists have to trust emergency and public safety person-nel to do their jobs, and must recognize that in some situations there may be little they can do to help. A reporter might be able to distract a suicidal person by talk-ing with them, but the wrong word at the wrong time can push a troubled person over the edge. Without training, the jour-nalist can pose a danger to him- or herself, and others.

The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, of which I was founding direc-tor, advises journalists arriving quickly at a violent scene to first assure their own safety. “It’s not your role to act as profes-sional responder unless someone’s life is in danger,” the Center advises, noting such risks as a perpetrator still being in the area, crumbling buildings, secondary bombs, and chemical or biological contamination. “If you notice a potentially dangerous situ-ation, leave the area immediately. Respect

the instructions of law-enforcement offi-cials and other first responders.”

Understand that holding the camera or recording what you see and hear may be the most effective way of interveningA photographer who has in view soldiers wantonly killing civilians faces an extraor-dinary ethical dilemma. That was the experience of Ron Haviv, who watched and photographed from a distance as Serb soldiers rousted Muslim civilians from their homes and shot them. The surviving images

provided evidence that helped the world understand the character of that war. Had Haviv tried to prevent the killings, he would have faced death himself. The world might never have seen his pictures.

News consumers also have a role in validating the journalist’s contribution. Images and stories from the Gulf Coast after Katrina conveyed the grim reality of a hurricane’s aftermath; as I’ve sug-gested, the reports both conveyed and fed anger and political resolve. Yet journalists

Reporting on Hurricane Katrina challenged Anderson Cooper’s commitment to the practice of journalistic detachment.

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Caught in the CrossfireBY JUDITH MATLOFF

It was January 23, 1993, in Angola. I was aboard a U.N. cargo plane that was dropping

food to the besieged city of Luena. After rebels had bombarded the town, civilians relied on these occasional flights to survive. Often children would run to the airport when they heard the planes above, and then lick grain that spilled on the tarmac as aid workers unloaded the sacks.

As we corkscrewed on descent, I realized that the rebels were shelling the airport. When the pilots threw open the Antonov’s doors, we saw inert bodies lying on the tarmac, patches of red and brown amid the gray potholes. I counted 50 wounded, 23 of them bleeding on stretchers. Most were women.

I didn’t think twice about helping them. These were not armed combatants but hungry people who strayed in front of missiles. As the pilots bellowed to hurry, I helped the aid workers escort the mutilated aboard. An infant was left alone on the asphalt. I joined the mother in screaming, “Someone get the baby!”

There were no ambulances waiting when we landed in the capital, Luanda. My rented car was one of the few vehicles at the airport. I instruct-ed my driver, João, to ferry a couple loads of wounded to the hospital. It occurred to me that I would miss my deadline. But so what? These people were losing blood and might die if they didn’t get medical attention soon.

When the last victim left the tarmac, João drove me back to the hotel. I washed the blood off my arms, and wrote my story. I felt easy about my action. I do not agree that the journal-ist’s job is simply to bear witness. Notebooks do not erase our humanity, and we should save lives if the action does not further a political agenda.

After Luena, I intervened again. I helped a Chechen family gain political asylum in the United States. I gave chocolate to hungry Sibe-rian toddlers. I found a doctor for an Angolan girl whose head was swollen with pus. And I’d readily do it again, and again.

Judith Matloff is an award-winning journalist who worked for 20 years as a staff foreign correspondent. Her last posts were in Moscow and in Africa, where she was the bureau chief of the Christian Science Monitor. She teaches war reporting at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.


have received little credit for this form of action, subjected often to the stigma of doing too little in a time of crisis. Journal-ists should take solace in knowing that they provided the truth about an event, and the value of that contribution should be recognized. Those who covered the Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbine school shootings, and such terrorist events as September 11 have sometimes doubted their efforts, in part because the public did not recognize the value of those contribu-tions.

The emotionally healthy journalist is key to our understanding of the darker aspects of our lives—the violence, the dangers, the fears that stalk our days. The journalist who can step up to prevent harm—whether through physical effort or aided by cameras, recorders, and note-pads—will do better journalism and give us a healthier view of our world, perhaps helping to cultivate a wider culture of engagement and belief in the efficacy of help and cooperation.

He or she also will be a healthier person. People who endure suffering and witness violence risk adopting a view of life that emphasizes its dangers over other possibili-ties. The bystander who witnesses horrors but doesn’t see a personal role in trying to alleviate them will come to see the world as fearsome rather than alive with possibil-ity. If the bystander is a journalist, this may distort coverage and possibly undermine the reader’s or viewer’s understanding of how to take constructive action. Recovery from trauma, it is clear, is eased by regain-ing a sense of having tried to help.

Many journalists already exemplify this kind of psychological and moral maturity. “You say to yourself, ‘Well, I was only able to help out that one family or that one person,’” Ron Haviv has written, “but that is enough for me right there.”

Fletcher Johnson, a veteran photogra-pher for ABC news, offers a similar per-spective. In 1994, he was on assignment to Zaire to photograph refugees from the genocidal nightmare in Rwanda. The dead and dying were everywhere. “How do you deal with that and keep working?” he told an interviewer. “How do you find ways to cope with that, the feeling of helpless-ness?” Johnson found a boy whose parents had died in the camp, loaded him onto a van, and took him to an orphanage. “You would not want to leave that kind of place and say, ‘All I did was make pictures.’”

Roger Simpson, Ph.D., is a professor of communication at the University of Wash-ington, where he holds the Dart Professor-ship for Journalism and Trauma, and was the founding director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. He is co-author, with William Coté, of Covering Violence: A Guide to Ethical Reporting about Victims and Trauma (Columbia University Press, 2nd ed., 2006), from which some of the details in this essay are drawn.

“Well, I was only able to help out that one person,” photographer Ron Haviv (left) has written, “but that is enough for me right there.”©

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over 22 years as a photographer for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Ted Jackson has shot everything his lively city has thrown at him: jazz festivals, drug dealing, murder scenes, and many, many Mardi Gras parades. But like most of New Orleans’s residents and elected officials, Hurricane Katrina caught him unprepared.

The hurricane hit New Orleans on a Monday morning. Jackson assumed, as did many of his neighbors and colleagues, that the damage was bad, perhaps as bad as the wreckage Hurricane Betsy caused to the city in 1965. Not until he set out later that morning did he realize how dire the situ-ation actually was; when the levees broke, it got much worse. Jackson’s photos from those first few days awakened his editors, and then the rest of the city and country, to the true extent of Katrina’s impact.

Getting those images was no easy feat. When the Times-Picayune staff evacuated its offices on Tuesday, most drove away in newspaper delivery trucks; Jackson found a rowboat and ventured into the city. He braved punishing winds and rising waters to shoot some of the first post-Katrina photos anyone would see.

But the weather was only one of his concerns. Jackson also faced the ethi-cal challenge of juggling his journalistic responsibilities with his desire to help the people he saw through his camera’s lens.

“I felt there were many times during Katrina when I was not just the first responder, but in a way I was the only responder, and if I didn’t help, no one else would,” he said. “I had to try to muddle through it and figure out when to shoot and when to try to help.”

Jackson’s story provides a dramatic example of a problem many journalists face every day: when to intervene in the events they’re covering, and when to remain observers. Jackson had to continually weigh the importance of his photos against the more immediate assistance he could offer to some of Katrina’s victims. Complicating matters further, he found himself in a few situations where he tried but was unable to help other people—was it still okay to shoot their picture?

What follows are four photos that Jack-son shot in the first four days after Katrina struck New Orleans. They illustrate four different ways he responded to the scenes before him. First is a photo Jackson shot even when he couldn’t help his subjects; the next one shows a situation in which he chose to help rather than keep shooting; then there is a scene he shot while also helping; and finally there’s a situation in which he believes taking a photo was the greatest help he could have provided to his subject.

Alongside each photo is Jackson’s account of the story behind it, revealing the ethical, practical, and professional con-siderations that were running through his head. Taken together, Jackson’s photos and narration document his struggle to do the right thing under extraordinary circum-stances. They also offer a unique case study of how a journalist handles his sometimes competing obligations to his subjects, his audience, his editors, and his own con-science. –Jason Marsh

In Hurricane Katrina, photojournalist Ted Jackson did more than take pictures.

The Eye ofthe Storm


It was Monday morning around noon, the day that the hur-ricane blew through. We had heard that there might be

flooding in the Lower Ninth Ward, and I was searching that area out. As I crossed the bridge to see what was happening on that side of the levee, these people were the very first thing that I saw. The storm was still howling and they were crying to me for help.

They said they had been there for about five hours, hanging onto that porch. It’s a little difficult to interpret, but they’re standing on the rail of the porch. The children can’t reach the rail themselves, so the parents have been holding them up. I was trying to find some way to help them off that porch, and that definitely took priority over taking pictures.

Usually the way I think about things like this is that you help them, and in the process you shoot pictures while you’re helping, so you get pictures and you’re doing something good at the same time. But in this situation there was no way I could help. There was a street between us, and the water was raging down it. I had nothing I could get to them with, and the water was about 10 feet deep. I asked them if they could get back inside the house and into the attic, and they told me that it wouldn’t hold them. So they were stuck there. The little girl in the lower right, they’re trying to get her to balance on a log. Their plan was to push her across on the log to me. I knew for a fact that that would never work; she would get swept away by the current. So I was just standing there, begging them not to do that. I kept pleading with them to wait for a boat.

I decided that I couldn’t just stand there and watch, but I also felt like I had to shoot a picture. I kept wrestling with the idea that I didn’t want to add to these people’s trauma, but I had to show the editors back at the paper what was happen-ing, because this was the first that we had seen of the water this high. So I raised the camera and shot a few pictures.

The situation could have easily tilted the other way, like if they were reacting in a way that was putting them in more peril because I was raising the camera up—if they were losing their grip or something like that, I wouldn’t have shot. I did try to get out of their direct sight, thinking I’d get a picture that they wouldn’t really see me shoot. But that didn’t work. As you can see in the picture, the woman in the middle with the ice chest is staring a hole through me.

I made a B-line to the paper to turn the pictures in, and then headed back out to try to help the people. I borrowed an inflatable boat and a rope, but by the time I got there, about an hour later, they were gone. No one had seen them. The rescu-ers assumed they had drowned.

It turns out about six or seven weeks later, I was able to track them down in a shelter in Houston, and they had all survived. When I finally got in touch with them, one of the women—she had a question for me. Her question was not, “Why did you shoot the picture?” Her question was, “Why did you leave us?” I said, “You definitely need to know that I came back.” And she said, “Well, I didn’t know that.” Then she had another question: “Can we have a copy of the picture? We’d love to see it.”

DAY ONE



This was the first picture I shot after finding dry land on Tuesday. I had been paddling in the rowboat

for almost five hours, then rested in some grass near Interstate 10, kind of numb, trying to figure out what had happened to the city. Suddenly I realized that helicopters were starting to land all around me. I remember saying to myself, “I really need to get up and start shooting pictures.” And this was the first thing I saw: these paramedics carrying this woman across the grass to some ambulances.

It seemed she had a broken hip—every step they took, she was screaming in agony. I just made a couple of frames; it was real hazy because there was so much water in the lens. But what I remember about the moment was that there were about three or four TV cameras that had shown up, and we were all standing together, trying to get this picture. As these para-medics brought her to the middle of the Interstate—we were on one side of a concrete barricade, and they were coming from the other—another paramedic met them with a rolling gurney. They lifted her feet across the barricade and put them on the gurney, but the gurney rolled away. They grabbed it, pulled it back, tried it a second time, and it rolled away again. I remember the paramedic looking at us and screaming, “For God’s sake, someone help us!”

When that happened, everybody basically just zoomed in tighter. I remember being so disgusted at the journalism profession at that moment—no one was opting to help. I threw my camera over my shoulder and helped lift the woman onto the gurney on our side of the barricade. As soon as she laid down flat, I just walked away. I remember thinking that I just wanted to go home, that I didn’t want to do this anymore.

One thing I kept thinking was, “There’s plenty of pictures here.” It’s not like stopping to help was going to change your coverage that much. You know, just take a breather and do something for humanity for a second, and then go back to work.

But I can’t judge the other guys. Surely, after the paramed-ics had tried and failed a few more times, someone else would have dropped their camera and helped. I had been living it now for almost two days, and maybe the other guys had just come out and needed a picture. It’s hard to judge what’s going through people’s minds at times like these.

I also think my experiences of being in the boat for so long and trying to help those women the day before—that was all kind of piling up at this point. I remember just thinking that I had to find a situation where I could help people. Just shooting pictures wasn’t enough in this moment.

At the same time, I recognized how important the pictures were. There was no denying that. Especially when you look at the long-term effects, the pictures will last much longer than anything you’re going to do for one individual. And yet, how can you ignore that individual?

DAY TWO


This was a nice moment. This was Wednesday, when another photographer and I were using his canoe,

and we were paddling downtown. We had this ethical discus-sion in the boat, trying to say, “Okay, here are the rules, this is what we’re going to do and this is what we aren’t going to do.”

We decided that we would not be able to put people in the canoe because there wouldn’t be enough room in it. But for every person we saw that was in distress, we would make it a point to mark their location and quickly find a rescue boat to get back to them. That was our operating procedure.

Our mission was also to shoot as many pictures as we could and get as far as we could get into the flood zone.

We came paddling through an intersection, and about a block away there were some young girls on a balcony, scream-ing for help. I would guess they were about 12 years old. We tried to ignore this because they looked like they were high and dry, but they were just frantic, so we paddled over to see what they needed. When we got to them, we realized they weren’t calling for help for themselves. They were pointing to this man hanging on a fence.

They said he’d been there for hours and was really getting weak and was, in their judgment, about to fall. I would say he was easily in his seventies. So we put our little plan into action: We found a boat and called it over and were able to get the boat to him and shoot the picture at the same time. They went behind the fence and pulled him off. We felt good—like, “This is our plan, it worked, this is what we want to do.”

I remember paddling back past the girls and they were applauding us and yelling, “You saved a life!” I remember yelling back at them, “No, you saved a life!” They seemed very pleased with us, though—it was a very nice moment. I regret not shooting their picture.

I remember walking to the Convention Center on Thurs-day with about seven other photographers—all walking

together, trying to have strength in numbers. We thought we were walking into a riot. We all thought that at the next step, we might have to turn and run. The crowd saw us—there were 30,000 of them—and about 10 people suddenly just ran toward us. But instead of threatening us, they started screaming, “The press is here! They’ll be able to tell our story!” Each photogra-pher got grabbed by the arm and pulled away.

This woman that grabbed me, she dropped to her knees and begged for help. “Help us please!” she was screaming. She was begging the world through our lenses.

That was kind of a defining moment, where I realized that the lenses were much more powerful than anything we could have brought with us. Had we brought cases of water, it wouldn’t have done nearly what the cameras were going to do.

And it was so clear—she knew it and we knew it—that we were all kind of a cog in the wheel there. It was a powerful moment. It’s moments like that when you suddenly realize the power of journalism, and the importance of it.

DAY THREE

DAY FOUR


thirty-five years ago, one of us (Philip Zimbardo) launched what is known as the Stanford Prison Experiment. Twen-ty-four young men, who had responded to a newspaper ad calling for participants in a study, were randomly assigned roles as “prisoners” or “guards” in a simulated jail in Stanford University’s psychology depart-ment. The “prisoners” were arrested at their homes by real police officers, booked, and brought to the jail. Everything from the deliberately humiliating prison uniforms to the cell numbers on the laboratory doors to the mandatory strip searches and delousing were designed to replicate the depersonal-izing experience of being in a real prison. The men who were assigned to be guards were given khaki uniforms, mirrored glasses, and billy clubs.

The idea was to study the psychology of imprisonment—to see what happens when you put good people in a dehuman-izing place. But within a matter of hours, what had been intended as a controlled experiment in human behavior took on a disturbing life of its own. After a prisoner rebellion on the second day of the experi-ment, the guards began using increasingly degrading forms of punishment, and the prisoners became more and more passive. Each group rapidly took on the behaviors associated with their role, not because of any particular internal predisposition or instructions from the experimenters, but rather because the situation itself so powerfully called for the two groups to assume their new identities. Interestingly, even the experimenters were so caught up in the drama that they lost objectivity, only terminating the out-of-control study when an objective outsider stepped in, reminding them of their duty to treat the participants humanely and ethically. The experiment,

scheduled to last two weeks, ended abrup-tly after six days.

As we have come to understand the psychology of evil, we have realized that such transformations of human character are not as rare as we would like to believe. Historical inquiry and behavioral science have demonstrated the “banality of evil” —that is, under certain conditions and social pressures, ordinary people can com-mit acts that would otherwise be unthink-able. In addition to the Stanford Prison Experiment, studies conducted in the 1960s by Stanley Milgram at Yale University also revealed the banality of evil. The Milgram experiments asked participants to play the role of a “teacher,” who was responsible for administering electric shocks to a “learner” when the learner failed to answer test ques-tions correctly. The participants were not aware that the learner was working with the experimenters and did not actually receive any shocks. As the learners failed more and more, the teachers were instruct-ed to increase the voltage intensity of the shocks—even when the learners started screaming, pleading to have the shocks stop, and eventually stopped responding altogether. Pressed by the experiment-ers—serious looking men in lab coats, who said they’d assume responsibility for the consequences—most participants did not stop administering shocks until they reached 300 volts or above—already in the lethal range. The majority of teachers deliv-ered the maximum shock of 450 volts.

We all like to think that the line between good and evil is impermeable—that people who do terrible things, such as commit murder, treason, or kidnapping, are on the evil side of this line, and the rest of us could never cross it. But the Stanford Prison Ex-periment and the Milgram studies revealed

the permeability of that line. Some people are on the good side only because situa-tions have never coerced or seduced them to cross over.

This is true not only for perpetrators of torture and other horrible acts, but for people who commit a more common kind of wrong—the wrong of taking no action when action is called for. Whether we con-sider Nazi Germany or Abu Ghraib prison, there were many people who observed what was happening and said nothing. At Abu Ghraib, one photo shows two soldiers smiling before a pyramid of naked pris-oners while a dozen other soldiers stand around watching passively. If you observe such abuses and don’t say, “This is wrong! Stop it!” you give tacit approval to contin-ue. You are part of the silent majority that makes evil deeds more acceptable.

In the Stanford Prison Experiment, for instance, there were the “good guards” who maintained the prison. Good guards, on the shifts when the worst abuses occurred, never did anything bad to the prisoners, but not once over the whole week did they confront the other guards and say, “What are you doing? We get paid the same money without knocking ourselves out.” Or, “Hey, remember those are college students, not prisoners.” No good guard ever intervened to stop the activities of the bad guards. No good guard ever arrived a minute late, left a minute early, or publicly complained. In a sense, then, it’s the good guard who allowed such abuses to happen. The situation dictated their inaction, and their inaction facilitated evil.

But because evil is so fascinating, we have been obsessed with focusing upon and analyzing evildoers. Perhaps because of the tragic experiences of the Second World War, we have neglected to consider the flip


HEROISMThe Banality

Circumstances can force almost anyone to be a bystander to evil, but they can also bring out our own inner hero. Zeno Franco and Philip Zimbardo show how we’re all capable of everyday heroism.

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side of the banality of evil: Is it also possible that heroic acts are something that anyone can perform, given the right mind-set and conditions? Could there also be a “banality of heroism”?

The banality of heroism concept sug-gests that we are all potential heroes wait-ing for a moment in life to perform a heroic deed. The decision to act heroically is a choice that many of us will be called upon to make at some point in time. By con-ceiving of heroism as a universal attribute of human nature, not as a rare feature of the few “heroic elect,” heroism becomes something that seems in the range of pos-sibilities for every person, perhaps inspiring more of us to answer that call.

Even people who have led less than exemplary lives can be heroic in a particu-lar moment. For example, during Hurricane Katrina, a young man named Jabar Gibson, who had a history of felony arrests, did something many people in Louisiana con-sidered heroic: He commandeered a bus, loaded it with residents of his poor New Orleans neighborhood, and drove them to safety in Houston. Gibson’s “renegade bus” arrived at a relief site in Houston before any government sanctioned evacuation efforts.

The idea of the banality of heroism debunks the myth of the “heroic elect,” a myth that reinforces two basic human

tendencies. The first is to ascribe very rare personal characteristics to people who do something special—to see them as superhuman, practically beyond com-parison to the rest of us. The second is the trap of inaction—sometimes known as the “bystander effect.” Research has shown that the bystander effect is often motivated by diffusion of responsibility, when differ-ent people witnessing an emergency all assume someone else will help. Like the “good guards,” we fall into the trap of inac-tion when we assume it’s someone else’s responsibility to act the hero.

In search of an alternative to this inac-tion and complicity with evil, we have been investigating the banality of heroism. Our initial research has allowed us to review example after example of people who have done something truly heroic, from indi-viduals who enjoy international fame to those whose names have never even graced the headlines in a local newspaper. This has led us to think more critically about the definition of heroism, and to consider the situational and personal characteristics that encourage or facilitate heroic behavior.

Heroism is an idea as old as humanity itself, and some of its subtleties are becom-ing lost or transmuted by popular culture. Being a hero is not simply being a good role model or a popular sports figure. We

believe it has become necessary to revisit the historical meanings of the word, and to make it come alive in modern terms. By concentrating more on this high watermark of human behavior, it is possible to foster what we term “heroic imagination,” or the development of a personal heroic ideal. This heroic ideal can help guide a person’s behavior in times of trouble or moral uncertainty.

What is heroism?Frank De Martini was an architect who had restored his own Brooklyn brown-stone. He enjoyed old cars, motorcycles, sailing, and spending time with his wife, Nicole, and their two children.

After the hijacked planes struck the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, De Martini, a Port Authority construc-tion manager at the Center, painstakingly searched the upper floors of the North Tower to help victims trapped by the attack. De Martini was joined by three colleagues: Pablo Ortiz, Carlos DaCosta, and Pete Negron. Authors Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn piece together the movements of De Martini and his colleagues in their book, 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers. The evidence suggests that these four men were able to save 70 lives, moving from problem to prob-lem, using just crowbars and flashlights—the only tools available. There are indications that De Martini was becoming increasingly concerned about the structural integrity of the building, yet he and his men continued to work to save others rather than evacuat-ing when they had the chance. All four men died in the collapse of the tower.

These were not men who were known previously as larger-than-life heroes, but surely, most of us would call their actions on September 11 heroic. But just what is heroism?

Heroism is different than altruism. Where altruism emphasizes selfless acts that assist others, heroism entails the potential for deeper personal sacrifice. The core of heroism revolves around the individual’s commitment to a noble purpose and the willingness to accept the consequences of fighting for that purpose.

Historically, heroism has been most closely associated with military service; however, social heroism also deserves close examination. While Achilles is held up as the archetypal war hero, Socrates’ willingness to die for his values was also a heroic deed. Heroism in service to a noble idea is usually not as dramatic as heroism


Brad Aldridge

that involves immediate physical peril. Yet social heroism is costly in its own way, often involving loss of financial stability, lowered social status, loss of credibility, arrest, torture, risks to family members, and, in some cases, death.

These different ways of engaging with the heroic ideal suggest a deeper, more intricate definition of heroism. Based on our own analysis of many acts that we deem heroic, we believe that heroism is made up of at least four independent dimensions.

First, heroism involves some type of quest, which may range from the preserva-tion of life (Frank De Martini’s efforts at the World Trade Center) to the preserva-tion of an ideal (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s pursuit of equal rights for African Americans).

Second, heroism must have some form of actual or anticipated sacrifice or risk. This can be either some form of physical

peril or a profound social sacrifice. The physical risks that firefighters take in the line of duty are clearly heroic in nature. Social sacrifices are more subtle. For example, in 2002, Tom Cahill, a researcher at the University of California, Davis, risked his credibility as a career scientist by call-ing a press conference to openly challenge the EPA’s findings that the air near Ground Zero was safe to breathe in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. His willing-ness to “go public” was challenged by the government and by some fellow scientists. Like Cahill, whistleblowers in government and business often face ostracism, physical threat, and the loss of their jobs.

Third, the heroic act can either be pas-sive or active. We often think of heroics as a valiant activity, something that is clearly observable. But some forms of heroism involve passive resistance or an unwilling-ness to be moved. Consider Revolutionary War officer Nathan Hale’s actions before

his execution by the British army. There was nothing to be done in that moment except to decide how he submitted to death—with fortitude or with fear. The words he uttered in his final moments (borrowed from Joseph Addison’s play Cato), “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country,” are remembered more than two centuries later as a symbol of strength.

Finally, heroism can be a sudden, one time act, or something that persists over a longer period of time. This could mean that heroism may be an almost instantaneous reaction to a situation, such as when a self-described “average guy” named Dale Sayler pulled an unconscious driver from a vehicle about to be hit by an oncoming train. Alternatively, it may be a well thought-out series of actions taking place over days, months, or a lifetime. For instance, in 1940, a Japanese consul official in Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara, signed more than 2,000



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visas for Jews hoping to escape the Nazi invasion, despite his government’s direct orders not to do so. Every morning when Sugihara got up and made the same deci-sion to help, every time he signed a visa, he acted heroically and increased the likeli-hood of dire consequences for himself and his family. At the end of the war he was unceremoniously fired from the Japanese civil service.

What makes a hero?Our efforts to catalogue and categorize heroic activity have led us to explore the factors that come together to create heroes. It must be emphasized that this is initial, exploratory work; at best, it allows us to propose a few speculations that warrant further investigation.

We have been able to learn from a body of prior research how certain situations can induce the bystander effect, which we men-tioned earlier. But just as they can create

bystanders, situations also have immense power to bring out heroic actions in people who never would have considered them-selves heroes. In fact, the first response of many people who are called heroes is to deny their own uniqueness with statements such as, “I am not a hero; anyone in the same situation would have done what I did,” or, “I just did what needed to be done.” Immediate life and death situations, such as when people are stranded in a burning house or a car wreck, are clear examples of situations that galvanize people into heroic action. But other situations—such as being witness to discrimination, corporate corruption, government malfeasance, or military atrocities—not only bring out the worst in people; they sometimes bring out the best. We believe that these situa-tions create a “bright-line” ethical test that pushes some individuals toward action in an attempt to stop the evil being perpe-trated. But why are some people able to

see this line while others are blind to it? Why do some people take responsibility for a situation when others succumb to the bystander effect?

Just as in the Stanford Prison Experi-ment and the Milgram studies, the situation and the personal characteristics of each person caught up in the situation interact in unique ways. We remain unsure how these personal characteristics combine with the situation to generate heroic action, but we have some preliminary ideas. The case of Sugihara’s intervention on behalf of the Jews is particularly instructive.

Accounts of Sugihara’s life show us that his efforts to save Jewish refugees was a dramatic finale to a long list of smaller efforts, each of which demonstrated a willingness to occasionally defy the strict social constraints of Japanese society in the early 20th century. For example, he did not follow his father’s instructions to become a doctor, pursuing language study and civil service instead; his first wife was not Japanese; and in the 1930s, Sugihara resigned from a prestigious civil service position to protest the Japanese military’s treatment of the Chinese during the occupation of Manchuria. These incidents suggest that Sugihara already possessed the internal strength and self-assurance necessary to be guided by his own moral compass in uncertain situations. We can speculate that Sugihara was more willing to assert his individual view than others around him who preferred to “go along to get along.”

Also, Sugihara was bound to two differ-ent codes: He was a sworn representative of the Japanese government, but he was raised in a rural Samurai family. Should he obey his government’s order to not help Jews (and, by extension, comply with his culture’s age-old moré not to bring shame on his family by disobeying authority)? Or should he follow the Samurai adage that haunted him, “Even a hunter cannot kill a bird which flies to him for refuge”? When the Japanese government denied repeated requests he made for permission to assist the refugees, Sugihara may have realized that these two codes of behavior were in conflict and that he faced a bright-line ethi-cal test.

Interestingly, Sugihara did not act impulsively or spontaneously; instead, he carefully weighed the decision with his wife and family. In situations that auger for social heroism, the problem may cre-ate a “moral tickle” that the person can not ignore—a sort of positive rumination,


Many of the guards in the Stanford Prison Experiment didn’t speak out when they witnessed disturbing abuse by their fellow guards; nearly 30 years later, guards at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq acted in nearly the same way.

Under certain conditions and social pressures, ordinary people can commit acts that would otherwise be unthinkable.



where we can’t stop thinking about some-thing because it does not sit right with us.

Yet this still leaves the question, “What prompts people to take action?” Many people in similar positions recognize the ethical problems associated with the situ-ation and are deeply disturbed, but simply decide to ignore it. What characterizes the final step toward heroic action? Are those who do act more conscientious? Or are they simply less risk averse?

We don’t know the answer to these vital questions—social science hasn’t resolved them yet. However, we believe that an important factor that may encourage heroic action is the stimulation of heroic imagina-tion—the capacity to imagine facing physi-cally or socially risky situations, to struggle with the hypothetical problems these situations generate, and to consider one’s actions and the consequences. By consider-ing these issues in advance, the individual becomes more prepared to act when and if a moment that calls for heroism arises. Strengthening the heroic imagination may help to make people more aware of the ethical tests embedded in complex situa-tions, while allowing the individual to have already considered, and to some degree transcended, the cost of their heroic action. Seeing one’s self as capable of the resolve necessary for heroism may be the first step toward a heroic outcome.

How to nurture the heroic imaginationOver the last century, we have witnessed the subtle diminution of the word “hero.” This title was once reserved only for those who did great things at great personal risk. Gradually, as we have moved toward mech-anized combat, especially during and after the Second World War, the original ideals of military heroism became more remote. At the same time, our view of social hero-ism has also been slowly watered down. We hold up inventors, athletes, actors, politicians, and scientists as examples of “heroes.” These individuals are clearly role models, embodying important qualities we would all like to see in our children—curi-osity, persistence, physical strength, being a Good Samaritan—but they do not demon-strate courage or fortitude. By diminishing the ideal of heroism, our society makes two mistakes. First, we dilute the impor-tant contribution of true heroes, whether they are luminary figures like Abraham Lincoln or the hero next door. Second, we keep ourselves from confronting the older,

more demanding forms of this ideal. We do not have to challenge ourselves to see if, when faced with a situation that called for courage, we would meet that test. In prior generations, words like bravery, fortitude, gallantry, and valor stirred our souls. Chil-dren read of the exploits of great warriors and explorers and would set out to follow in those footsteps. But we spend little time thinking about the deep meanings these words once carried, and focus less on trying to encourage ourselves to consider how we might engage in bravery in the social sphere, where most of us will have an opportunity to be heroic at one time or another. As our society dumbs down hero-ism, we fail to foster heroic imagination.

There are several concrete steps we can take to foster the heroic imagination. We can start by remaining mindful, carefully and critically evaluating each situation we encounter so that we don’t gloss over an emergency requiring our action. We should try to develop our “discontinuity detec-tor”—an awareness of things that don’t fit, are out of place, or don’t make sense in a setting. This means asking questions to get the information we need to take respon-sible action.

Second, it is important not to fear inter-personal conflict, and to develop the per-sonal hardiness necessary to stand firm for principles we cherish. In fact, we shouldn’t think of difficult interactions as conflicts but rather as attempts to challenge other people to support their own principles and ideology.

Third, we must remain aware of an extended time-horizon, not just the present moment. We should be engaged in the current situation, yet also be able to detach part of our analytical focus to imagine alternative future scenarios that might play out, depending on different actions or failures to act that we take in the present. In addition, we should keep part of our minds on the past, as that may help us recall values and teachings instilled in us long ago, which may inform our actions in the current situation.

Fourth, we have to resist the urge to rationalize inaction and to develop justifi-cations that recast evil deeds as acceptable means to supposedly righteous ends.

Finally, we must try to transcend antici-pating negative consequence associated with some forms of heroism, such as being socially ostracized. If our course is just, we must trust that others will eventually recognize the value of our heroic actions.

But beyond these basic steps, our society needs to consider ways of fostering heroic imagination in all of its citizens, most particularly in our young. The ancient Greeks and Anglo Saxon tribes venerated their heroes in epic poems such as the Iliad and Beowulf. It is easy to see these stories as antiquated, but their instructions for the hero still hold up.

In these stories, the protagonist often encounters a mystical figure who attempts to seduce the hero away from his path. In our own lives, we must also avoid the seduction of evil, and we must recognize

Two everyday heroes: Researcher Tom Cahill (above) and New Orleans resident Jabar Gibson (opposite page) both acted to help others when they witnessed a crisis.

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THE BYSTANDER’S DILEMMAA STORY OF HEROISM

The Prison Guard’s DilemmaBY JASON MARSH

Thirty years after the Stanford Prison Experiment ended abruptly, its findings

resonated in the photos that escaped from Abu Ghraib prison: prisoners with hoods over their heads, put in humiliating positions; young guards pandering to the camera as they abused their subjects. The soldiers at Abu Ghraib were ordinary young men and women thrown into an environment in which abusive and degrading behavior became the norm.

But if Abu Ghraib revealed the banality of evil, it also exposed the banality of heroism. While the culture of the prison persuaded everyone else to perform or accept prisoner abuse, Sergeant Joseph Darby, a 24-year-old Army reservist, saw what his fellow soldiers were doing, and he acted to stop it.

Another soldier gave Darby a CD with photos of the abuses on them. “It was amus-ing at first,” he said in a recent interview with ABC News. “[But] after I’d looked at all the pictures, I realized I had a decision to make.”

Darby decided to turn in the CD to a superior. The military initiated an investiga-tion but didn’t disclose who at Abu Ghraib had reported the abuses. For a month and a half, Darby lived in a perpetual state of fear, hoping his identity as the whistle blower wouldn’t be revealed, sleeping with a gun under his pillow. But he remained convinced that he had done his duty as a solider.

“[The abuse] violated everything I person-ally believed in and all I’d been taught about the rules of war,” he said during a pretrial hearing for one of the perpetrators. “It was more of a moral call.”

In the two years since the photos first came to light, eight soldiers have been punished for their role in the abuses, and Darby has been hailed as a hero. He has also been vilified by people in and out of the military. Vandal-ism and threats against his wife and mother forced them to move from their Pennsylvania home; Darby went into protective custody, and now lives in hiding. Still, he has expressed no regrets about blowing the whistle on Abu Ghraib.

“It had to be done,” he told ABC News.


that the seduction will probably be quite ordinary—an unethical friend or coworker, for instance. By passing a series of smaller tests of our mettle, we can cultivate a per-sonal habit of heroism.

Epic poems also often tell of the hero visiting the underworld. This metaphori-cal encounter with death represents an acceptance and transcendence of one’s own mortality. To this day, some forms of hero-ism require paying the ultimate price. But we can also understand this as a hero’s will-ingness to accept any of the consequences of heroic action—whether the sacrifices are physical or social.

Finally, from the primeval war stories of Achilles to Sugihara’s compelling kind-ness toward the Jewish refugees in World War Two, a code of conduct served as the framework from which heroic action emerged. In this code, the hero follows a set of rules that serves as a reminder, some-times even when he would prefer to forget, that something is wrong and that he must attempt to set it right. Today, it seems as if we are drifting further and further away from maintaining a set of teachings that serve as a litmus test for right and wrong.

But in a digital world, how do we con-nect ourselves and our children to what were once oral traditions? Hollywood has accomplished some of these tasks. The recent screen version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings brought us a classic story that is based on the epic tradition. Yet how many of us have stopped and talked with our children about the deeper mean-ings of this tale? As the sophistication of

video gaming grows, can the power of this entertainment form be used to educate chil-dren about the pitfalls of following a herd mentality? Could these games help children develop their own internal compass in mor-ally ambiguous situations? Or perhaps even help them think about their own ability to act heroically? And as we plow ahead in the digital era, how can the fundamen-tal teachings of a code of honor remain relevant to human interactions?

If we lose the ability to imagine our-selves as heroes, and to understand the meaning of true heroism, our society will be poorer for it. But if we can reconnect with these ancient ideals, and make them fresh again, we can create a connection with the hero in ourselves. It is this vital, internal conduit between the modern work-a-day world and the mythic world that can prepare an ordinary person to be an everyday hero.

Zeno Franco is a Ph.D. candidate in clinical psychology at Pacific Graduate School of Psychology in Palo Alto, California. He recently completed a three year U.S. Depart-ment of Homeland Security Fellowship. Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D., is a professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University, a two-time past president of the Western Psychological Association, and a past president of the American Psychological Association. The idea of the banality of heroism was first presented in an essay he wrote for Edge (www.edge.org), where he was one of many scholars who replied to the question, “What idea is dangerous to you?”

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before he had completed medical training, David Shlim found his sense of compassion slipping. “Halfway through my first year of residency I found myself wishing that a patient would die so that I could go back to sleep,” he writes in his book, Medicine & Compassion. He had been awake and on call for 22 hours straight, and was just stealing some rest when the patient arrived in the emergency room. He shook off the thought, took care of his patient, and fell back into bed. But that early lapse haunted him.

In 1983, after years of working in a family clinic and an emergency room, Shlim again felt on the edge of serious burnout. An avid moun-taineer, he moved to Nepal, where he took up practice at a medical clinic for travelers. Then he began volunteering at a local monastery, offering

medical care to Tibetan Buddhist monks. He was so impressed by one of the monks, whose patience and kindness toward others never wavered, that he began to wonder how he him-self could cultivate those qualities. He started to train more seriously in meditation.

“Over time, I became aware that my encounters with patients were changing in positive ways,” he recounts in his book. “I was able to create an environment that allowed patients to more easily say what they needed to say. I found I had more patience for irritable and angry people. I could help comfort severely ill or dying patients more easily. In other words, I had found a way to train in being the kind of doctor I had always wanted to be.”

In 2000, Shlim and the Buddhist abbot who inspired him, Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, began

FINDING MEANING

Physician burnout, rushed and impersonal care for patients —this is what’s ailing the medical profession today. Some doctors have a prescription for change.

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FINDING MEANINGto organize training groups for other physicians and health care professionals who wanted to be more compassionate in their work. In July of 2005, the two taught a course at the Harvard School of Public Health. These days Shlim gives talks on the subject in hospitals and other medical settings near his home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and is looking for ways to extend this program to other places.

Shlim is quick to point out that it isn’t neces-sary to become Buddhist or practice meditation in order to benefit from this approach. “It’s an internal change,” said Shlim. “And it doesn’t actu-ally require more time. You just have to convey compassion when you walk in the room.”

David Shlim’s program is part of a growing trend around the country, intended to reconnect physicians with the human dimension of their work. From California to Wyoming to Wash-ington, D.C., these programs are helping more doctors experience the kind of transformation that Shlim had in Nepal. They range from support groups for medical students to classes in empathy for practicing physicians. All are aimed at rebal-ancing a medical culture that often defines itself by technique and efficiency.

“If you were to design a compassionate health care system, you wouldn’t design it like this,” said Shlim. Often doctors settle for a kind of “de facto compassion,” he said. “‘Of course I care for you—I’m caring for you, aren’t I? ’”

The problems boil down to an often rushed atmosphere and a diminished relationship between doctors and their patients. Overwhelm-ing caseloads of patients and demands from insurance companies to limit costs contribute to the problem. While technological advances have brought enormous advantages to medical care, they’ve also given rise to the model of the objective technician, the efficient expert bent on diagnosing an illness and fixing it.

“The technician views someone as, ‘You are a broken liver and I am a liver expert,’” said Charles Garfield, a clinical professor of psychology at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine. “It’s a splendid model for automobiles, but not so splendid for human beings.”

Statistics on physician burnout have soared in the past few decades. Yet this crisis in care, for patients and doctors alike, has led David Shlim and numerous other physicians to seek ways to reconcile modern medicine with more traditional values. In the process, they’ve come up with inno-vative programs to rekindle compassion.

Helping the patient, healing the healerA pioneer in this field is Rachel Naomi Remen, a clinical professor of family and community medi-cine at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine.

For the past 14 years, Remen has taught a course at UCSF called “The Healer’s Art,” in which medical students learn how to offer stronger emotional support to their patients, their colleagues, and themselves.

The course encourages students to discuss their emotions openly, appreciate the importance of listening to other people’s stories, and find ways to maintain their humanity in the often intense and impersonal medical world.

“There’s an absolute hunger for this kind of connection,” said Remen. As evidence, “The Healer’s Art” has spread to 47 medical schools, including institutions in Slovenia, Israel, and Sri Lanka.

Emma Samelson-Jones took the course in her first year of medical school at UCSF. “I came away with the sense that medicine is more than finding the correct diagnosis and treating that condition,” she said. “Being present for somebody may be more valuable than all the science we are learn-ing.”

As part of the class, she and other students wrote their own versions of the Hippocratic oath. (See sidebar on next page.) Samelson-Jones’s oath read:

Do not ask me what is wrong, for I may not know. Do not ask me why this happened, for I may not know. Do not ask me what to do, for I may not know. But ask me if I will try to understand, if I will think of you first, if I will stay with you, and I may be able, at last, to lift my eyes to meet yours, and say, “Yes, yes, yes, I will.”

Two of the first participants in the course, Ann Kellams, now a pediatrician, and Bryce Kellams, a family doctor, met in medical school and eventu-ally married. They have since taken the program to other medical students at the University of Virginia, where they are on the faculty. “Bryce and I feel it’s the most important course we took in medical school,” said Ann Kellams.

In three years the course at UVA has grown from 35 students and 5 faculty to 84 students and 15 faculty. The course offers time for medical stu-dents to seriously consider issues of self-care, grief, loss, and community. “It speaks to the calling that brings people to medicine,” said Ann Kellams, “not just the science. We get reinvigorated and patients respond to that. They love it. They say, ‘Oh, finally! Someone to cheer me on or hear me out.’ It’s been amazing. It’s so simple, but it’s been so neglected and forgotten.”

For physicians already in practice, Remen is also the founder and director of the Institute for the Study of Health and Illness (ISHI) in Bolinas, California. She offers a program there called “Finding Meaning in Medicine,” which aims to address what she calls “the hidden crisis” in health

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care—the strains that can come from trying to practice good medicine in today’s challenging environment. Remen uses a group process to encourage physicians to listen to and support each other, and rediscover joy in their work.

The first topic the group considers is compas-sion. One of her initial exercises is to ask the participating physicians when they first remem-ber being aware of the suffering of living things. Some may remember becoming aware as adults, but fully a third say they were younger than 10. “In that moment, there’s a shock of recogni-tion,” said Remen, “that underneath the scientific dimension of medicine, there’s a deeper inten-tion that goes back long before they ever went to medical school.” Around the country, graduates of Remen’s class continue to meet in small “Find-ing Meaning in Medicine” groups.

At the Center for Mind-Body Medicine at Georgetown University, director James S. Gor-don, M.D., also works with practicing physicians. His program has an enduring theme: “Physicians, heal each other.”

“The heart of the work we do is about self-care as the foundation for being with others and car-ing for others,” he said. Gordon strongly believes that physicians must open up and shed the armor of detachment if they are to serve their patients and feel personally fulfilled.

In the Georgetown program, medical students work together in intimate small groups, where they learn meditation techniques and techniques for self-expression, with the goals of expressing and understanding the personal struggles they’ll face in school and over their careers. Crucial to

the program is bearing witness to each other as they move through challenges and pain. The result, said Gordon, is an increase in the compas-sion that medical students feel for each other. “Our groups,” said Gordon, “hold out a hope of community to people who may feel isolated and unfulfilled in their hospitals and clinics and private offices.” Gordon’s model has been used in 18 medical schools across the country.

Family physician Wendy Buffett of San Francisco attended Gordon’s classes and says the small group work was a rich and beneficial experience. She said it has even helped her form a closer connection to her patients and get through to them. “In medicine you are always looking for that little shift, ways that you can encourage someone to take better care of themselves,” said Buffett, who is also an assistant clinical profes-sor at the University of California, San Francisco, Medical School.

The Humanities in Medicine program at Cornell University’s Weill Medical College also helps medical students strengthen their connec-tions to their patients. The program draws upon literature and drama to attune students to their patients’ needs, as well as to their own human-ity. Dean Debra Gillers saw the need for such a program when she realized that medical students in their twenties just don’t have the depth of experience to know what serious illness, loss of independence, or the prospect of death can mean to a patient. To help them understand, Gillers has had the late writer Susan Sontag come talk about cancer and Angels in America author Tony Kush-ner talk about AIDS. The late novelist William

Rachel Naomi Remen designed a medical school course called “The Healer’s Art,” in which students learn how to offer stronger emo-tional support to their patients, their colleagues, and themselves. “There’s an absolute hunger for this kind of connection,” she said.

“It’s fundamentally a different model,” said Garfield. “We must move from detached concern to engaged concern.”

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Styron spoke to the classes about the debilitating depression he had experienced and written about. Equally important, said Gillers, was that Styron’s wife also came and discussed the effects of depression on their family. Last year, the program offered a reading of Arthur Kopit’s play Wings, in which the central character has a stroke and loses the ability to use or understand language. Gillers has invited patients, too, to come and talk candidly about their experiences in the medical system—both bad and good. “People want to tell doctors what worked and what they are grateful for,” she said.

The practical side of caringAt the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, Charles Garfield has been talking about compassion and empathy for decades. But he has found that for many of his medical resident students, learning the technical side of medicine just proves too overwhelming. “How do values like compassion fit in when so much of what they learn in practice is the reper-toire of the mechanic?” asked Garfield. “You have a disconnect when you talk of human values.”

What does make students’ ears perk up, Garfield said, isn’t the notion of better relation-ships with patients alone, but the idea of better compliance. Patients who feel good about their encounters with a doctor are more likely to follow medical advice, Garfield tells his classes.

Indeed, according to the giant Kaiser Perma-nente health organization, some 40 percent of patients, suffering from a variety of ailments, fail to follow doctors’ orders—and, says Kaiser, the major determinant as to whether a patient will follow advice, or take prescribed medications, is the clinician-patient relationship. Since the 1960s, many studies have shown that building rapport with patients—through a compassionate attitude and empathic communication, for instance—can make a substantial difference in how well patients follow physicians’ instructions. What’s more, a doctor’s communication style can affect not just patients’ adherence to medical regimens, but can influence the patients’ level of satisfaction with their care, their grasp of the facts about their condition, and can even influence the outcome of their illness. A study recently published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, for instance, showed that just 40 seconds of compassionate commu-nication from a physician could reduce anxiety among breast cancer patients.

While Garfield makes the point that a move to patient-centered medicine meets the doctor’s needs as well as the patient’s, he cautions that getting compassion into health care is not about tacking a few new skills onto an unchanged physician. “It’s fundamentally a different model,” he said. “We must move from detached concern to engaged concern.”

Doctors can start with caring communica-tion. You can’t teach compassion any more than you can teach happiness, Garfield believes. But there are empathic skills that can be taught. This includes allowing patients to tell their stories—what’s sometimes called “narrative medicine.”

“In narrative medicine, simply listening is an important act,” said Garfield. “It requires that doctors do what the best healers have done through the millennium: to have the courage and generosity to listen when there are no clear answers, and to bear witness to losses.”

A matter of timeThat so many programs have sprouted up, and so many doctors have embraced them, is good news for patients and doctors alike. But challenges remain. Perhaps the most oft-cited obstacle to compassion is the time factor: Just how much emotional involvement can a physician bring to an exam room when the clock is ticking?

Rachel Remen makes the point that compas-sion doesn’t necessarily require a slower pace, just more attention. “Compassion isn’t a function of time,” she said. “It’s almost instantaneous.” To illustrate her point, she talks about a well-known and highly respected surgeon, Dr. Norman Shum-way, who died this past year. “He was also a man of great compassion,” said Remen.

When Remen’s father developed a heart problem, he went to Shumway for surgery. “My father spent a couple days in the hospital before the surgery, and he was anxious and frightened,” she said. “I was concerned about his outcome, because of his uncertainty and his fear that things were going to go wrong. I am sure that the fact he was anxious and frightened was noted in his chart.

“The day before the surgery, I came to see him. I asked him how he was feeling and he said, ‘I feel really confident.’ I asked him what had hap-pened. He told me he had been standing in the doorway of his room, wearing one of those hos-pital gowns and paper slippers, when Shumway came walking down the hall, followed by a group of people. He saw my father standing in the door-way, and he stopped. He took my father’s hands in his, a double handed hand shake, and he said, ‘Mr. Remen, I’m Dr. Shumway. Are you feeling strong?’ My father, feeling his hands being held that way, nodded, and Shumway said, ‘I am too,’ and gave my father’s hands a squeeze. He said, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow in the operating room.’

“My father was transformed,” said Remen, “and the whole encounter took no more than 50 seconds.”

Karin Evans is a former editor of Hippocrates maga-zine and the author of The Lost Daughters of China: Abandoned Girls, Their Journey to America, and the Search for a Missing Past (Penguin Putnam).

Beyond “Do No Harm”BY K ARIN EVANS

Physicians Ann and Bryce Kellams —graduates of Rachel Remen’s

“Healer’s Art” class—have gone on to teach the class at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. As part of the class, students write their own versions of the Hippocratic oath. Below are some examples of their work.

“Help me to listen with my heartFeel with my mindNotice with my wholenessTouch with my compassionThat I may cherish the wonders and flavors of humankind.”

“Join me in this placeof sadness and lightof darkness and lovewhere it is safe to talkand safe to bow together in silence.”

“The table may not be softbut it is a placeof honorMy hands may not be warmBut my heart beats with yours.”

“Stay awhile that we maynourish the flameof hope and wonderthat will warm your world, my world, the whole world.”

“I want to be more: compassionate, quick to forgive, servant-like, selfless, thankful, humble, bold, loving, non-judgmental, honest. I want to see others, loving their good qualities and forgiving their bad qualities.”


w h e n z ay n e l o g s d on s t rug gl e d w i t h e y e s igh t problems five years ago, doctors told his mother Lisa that they could help—but it would cost her. Special eyeglasses for then-four-year-old Zayne, whose sensory problems were brought on by autism, would set her back more than $500. Logsdon despaired. Her husband’s own health trouble recently had forced him out of work, and she was a full-time graduate student earning her teach-ing credentials. The Kentucky couple could not afford the cost of helping their son make sense of the world around him.

Logsdon contacted her local Lions Club chapter and several other organizations, but none offered assistance. The family did not qualify for government aid. A desperate Logsdon searched the Internet for a solution, and she stumbled upon Modest Needs. The nonprofit foundation, then based in Tennessee, gives grants to working people to help them cover unexpected one-time expens-es—medical bills, car repairs, large heating bills—that they other-wise could not afford. Thinking her tab hardly modest, Logsdon sent Modest Needs a request for just $50. Before long she had a reply from Modest Needs’ founder and president, Keith Taylor: His organization would pay the entire $557 cost of the special lenses.

Today, Zayne is a lively nine-year-old who loves music and excels in math; this past May, doctors even said he had outgrown his need for his glasses. He spends most of his school day in a mainstream third-grade classroom, progress that would not have been possible without those glasses, Logsdon said. Modest Needs helped her family with a budget crisis that, while crushing, was hardly unique. “The truth of the matter is it could happen to anyone,” Logsdon said. With Modest Needs, she said, a recipient “could be your neighbor, your best friend, someone in your family. I can really appreciate that.”

Logsdon was one of the earliest recipients of Modest Needs. Since it began in 2002, the organization has evolved from a part-time project into a full-time operation, now based in New York City, that funnels 100 percent of its donations from individual donors to carefully screened recipients. At a time when soaring health care and fuel costs have made it harder for middle- and working-class families to make ends meet, Modest Needs offers a rare and well-targeted form of relief. “It’s very humbling to look at the true scope of what the need is,” Taylor said. He didn’t realize how daunting his mission would be when he started out. “Had I known that, I might’ve been deterred, so maybe it’s good I didn’t.”

The organization’s goals are twofold: to prevent recipients from falling into poverty, and to open donors’ eyes to their power to change the world. To achieve these goals, it relies on a deceptively simple model. Donors can give any amount they choose to Mod-est Needs, mainly through its website. Some donors give once; others give on a weekly or monthly basis. Each month, anyone who donated during that month can go online to review funding applications and rank them on a scale of one through nine. Every donor’s vote gets equal weight, no matter how much he or she gave. The funds raised over the previous month are dispersed to the highest-ranking applicants first, then on down the list until there’s no money left. The average grant size is $355 and the maxi-mum, with very few exceptions, is $1,000. Many recipients go on to become donors; at least one donor became a recipient.

Those on both sides of the funding equation praise Modest Needs’ un-bureaucratic approach. The organization can answer requests in a matter of days, sending urgent aid to prevent, for example, a family’s heat from being turned off. And it pays recipi-ents’ bills directly, instead of sending cash, so there’s never a ques-

As working families find it ever harder to pay their bills, a nonprofit organization connects small donors to people with modest needs. BY ELIZABETH O’BRIEN

Each One, Help One


tion of how the funds are used. This streamlined giving process allows donors to touch lives directly and with measurable results. “There are very few layers in the organization,” said Stella Kramer, a regular Modest Needs donor who lives in New York City. “It’s so direct and it makes so much sense.”

For many of Modest Needs’ recipients, a few hundred dollars can make the difference in retaining their jobs, or keeping their homes, during financial emergencies. Melanie Carter had been a Modest Needs donor before she found herself struggling to make a mortgage payment. Eye surgery had kept her out of work for four months, and short-term disability benefits were slow to arrive, so the Tennessee woman turned to Modest Needs in the interim. “It saved my house,” she said. Soon after she got back on her feet, Carter resumed her regular donations to Modest Needs. Taylor likes telling the story of a Texas woman who requested help with a car payment so she could commute to work. Only after she received the grant did the woman reveal that her son was born without part of an arm, and that she also needed the car to drive him to the hospital to pick up a free prosthesis he had been promised.

If they can’t turn to friends or family, working people in the United States have few options when faced with unexpected expenses like these. Most U.S. charities are umbrella organiza-tions that collect large amounts of money to disburse to other nonprofits, not to individuals. And public assistance is only for the destitute. In New York City, for example, a family of four must have an income below $18,330 before it can qualify for some public assistance. “We make people get very poor before we give them benefits,” said Beth Weitzman, a professor of health and public pol-icy at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. Modest Needs investigates each grant application to make sure it results from an emergency and not, say, poor bud-geting. According to Taylor’s calculations, the foundation’s average grant of $355 is worth a combined $1,837 to the recipient and the state welfare system for every month that it keeps the recipient working and off public assistance.

Taylor conceived of Modest Needs as a side project when he worked as a tenure-track literature professor at Middle Tennes-see State University, a job that he loved. He originally envisioned a one-man charity funded with 10 percent of his salary, or about $300 per month, as a way to honor those who helped him through graduate school. In April of 2002, a friend posted Taylor’s proposal for Modest Needs on the popular community weblog Metafilter.com. He received 700 emails in response, most of them from people wanting to donate. The media picked up on the story, and Taylor found himself on the Today show just two weeks later. He took his project full time and moved to New York City in 2003, and now oversees a full-time staff of three.

A boyish 39, Taylor clearly relishes his role as philanthropic matchmaker. Sitting at his tidy desk in Modest Needs’ basement office in a brownstone on Manhattan’s East Side—a Michigan donor pays the rent—he used phrases like “knock your socks off ” when describing Modest Needs’ rapid growth. “We built this orga-nization on five dollars a head,” he said. Modest Needs’ motto—“Small Change. A World of Difference.”—also speaks to the power of the small monthly donations that sustain it.

While Taylor has no background in nonprofit administration, he has created a case study in fundraising best practices. Through the online voting process, donors take an active role setting Modest Needs’ funding priorities. Taylor encourages recipients to write thank-you testimonials, which are also posted on the

organization’s website. Research shows that donors like to see this kind of return on their investment. “We know that if you’re able to point to a specific impact, donors will be a lot more loyal,” said Adrian Sargeant, the Robert F. Hartsook chair in fundraising at the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy. Taylor nurtures his relationship with donors through a blog and regular emails, which update them on Modest Needs news but do not solicit new contributions, something many donors appreciate. Only five to ten percent of nonprofits engage in this kind of “relationship fundrais-ing,” Sargeant said, meaning they focus on developing long-term bonds with donors instead of just relying on them to meet a par-ticular funding target.

This model has created a community of committed donors. Of the 3,000 people who give annually to Modest Needs, 500 give regular monthly donations. Sixty-five percent of recipients turn around and donate to Modest Needs at least once. A disabled woman in Ohio sends a $1 check each month to thank Modest Needs for helping her repair a rotting floor under her bathtub; she lives on just $742 per month. These small contributions add up: Modest Needs received an average of $34,000 per month from individual donors in 2006.

But it’s never just about the money. Taylor is also making good on his goal to awaken people to their ability to effect very real positive change in the world. For instance, in one online testimoni-al, a Florida woman wrote, “I’ve always dreamt of having money so that I could be a major philanthropist and make a difference in our communities, but Modest Needs has reminded me that this can happen now.” In another testimonial, a Kentucky recipient wrote, “You have given me hope and faith in the goodness of people and reminded me that God is in all of us.”

Lisa Logsdon, too, understands the power of small donations and now gives what she can to Modest Needs. Long after the organization helped her help her son, she remembers how it replaced her despair with a sense of hope. “When I got the grant for Zayne’s glasses, I got back a part of me that I had given up,” Logsdon recalled. “That’s a part of the grant that’ll stay with me for my whole life.”

Elizabeth O’Brien is a writer who lives in Brooklyn. Her freelance writ-ing has appeared in The New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor. Her last article for Greater Good was about the youth theater group City at Peace.

Left: When Lisa Logsdon couldn’t afford specialized glasses for her son Zayne, Modest Needs came to her rescue.

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Modest Needs founder Keith Taylor reviews hundreds of grant applications each month.

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Stumbling on HappinessBY DANIEL GILBERTKnopf, 2006, 277 pages

daniel gilbert’s engaging and surprising new book, Stumbling on Happiness, won’t teach you how to become happy, but it will convince you of how difficult that goal is to achieve. Gilbert, a social

psychologist at Harvard, specializes in “affective forecasting,” which means he studies how people remember their feel-ings during past events and predict their reactions to future ones. Unfortunately, as Gilbert shows in study after study, our brains are “talented forgers,” which take out and fill in details essential to accurate judgments: We use our current emotions to (mis)estimate our past feelings, we tend to pay extra attention to information that cor-roborates our opinions, and we are much more sensitive to changes in our environ-ment than to the status quo.

In addition, when we imagine something we would like to experience in the future, we tend to gloss over the fine details and focus on a more abstract, general idea of that experience. This would be fine if we realized that we left out so much detail and adjusted our expectations accordingly, but we don’t. So when we decide to go to our high school reunion, for example, we imagine how meaningful it will be to see old friends, but we fail to anticipate the specifics. When that reunion rolls around, we will likely be faced with uncomfortable silences and wonder why we decided to go in the first place.

Given our failures as forecasters, Gilbert explains, the things we expect to make us happy may leave us disappointed—and supposed disappointments may actually bring us happiness. Gilbert quotes a man who was wrongfully imprisoned for 37 years as saying his ordeal was “a glorious experience”; another man who was para-lyzed from the neck down said that before his accident, he “didn’t appreciate others nearly as much as I do now.” What’s going on here? According to Gilbert, unhappy outcomes make us adjust our expectations for life and reappraise our situation, so that we find it more pleasurable. “The moral

of the story?” Gilbert glibly writes, “If you want to be happy, healthy, wealthy, and wise, then skip the vitamin pills and plastic surgeries and try public humiliation, unjust incarceration, or quadriplegia instead.”

Gilbert’s book does offer some hope for happiness that doesn’t involve paralysis or a prison sentence. His final point is that, odd as it may sound, one of the best ways to predict happiness during a future event is to talk with people who have experienced that same event already. Although we imagine ourselves to be so unique as to be unable to use random people’s experience as a guide to personal fulfillment, Gilbert shows how this is actually a much better predictor of happiness than our own wish-ful thinking.

—Laura Saslow

The Anatomy of PeaceBY THE ARBINGER INSTITUTEBerrett-Koehler, 2006, 231 pages

the premise of this book may seem familiar to some readers: that conflict, whether between spouses or nations, begins when we stigma-tize and dehuman-ize those with whom we disagree. But The Anatomy

of Peace takes an original approach to mak-ing this point. It tells the story of Lou, the father of a drug-addicted teenage boy, who reluctantly attends a workshop for parents of troubled teens. Lou enters the workshop assuming no responsibility for his family’s problems, attributing all blame to his son. The workshop leaders—a Palestinian and an Israeli—teach Lou and the other parents how to help their children by first changing their own attitudes and behaviors. They demonstrate that treating others humanely can resolve conflict better than direct confrontation, and they use the conflicts between the parents and their children, between the spouses, and even between workshop participants themselves to prove their point.

Though the workshop depicted in the book is fictional, it feels authentic. In fact, it is based on hundreds of actual workshops conducted by the Arbinger Institute—a consulting firm specializing in conflict

resolution. The book was written by Jim Ferrell, Arbinger’s managing director, and Ferrell’s real-world experience has clearly informed his writing. One of the book’s strengths is that it doesn’t assume transfor-mation is easy, and indeed, it is not easy for Lou. A crisis at Lou’s workplace keeps him on the phone between workshop sessions and provides another interpersonal prob-lem for him to solve. As conflicts escalate around him, the workshop prompts Lou to re-evaluate his attitudes and take more responsibility for solving the problems he faces. When he tentatively calls a mutinous employee to make amends, he is met with hostility, and the reader sympathizes with Lou’s confusion and disappointment. But as Lou perseveres, the reader is subtly inspired to do the same.

The book offers a realistic portrayal of conflict and is prescriptive without being preachy. It is difficult to read The Anatomy of Peace and not recognize the role we all play in perpetuating conflict. One can’t help but fantasize that, somehow, the book could become required reading for world leaders. But of course, as this book so ably demonstrates, it is much easier to expect change from others than to work on trans-forming oneself.

—Jill Suttie

Critical Lessons: What Our Schools Should TeachBY NEL NODDINGSCambridge University Press, 2006, 319 pages

does homework help kids learn, or does it just teach docility and obedience? Why are so many men and women attracted to war? What does it take to build a home—physi-cally, socially, and emotionally?

These are some of the many questions Nel Noddings poses in Critical Lessons, a new book that advocates critical think-ing and self-knowledge as the best ways to reinvigorate our woefully inadequate school systems.

Rather than teach 13 years of lessons that serve only to prepare kids for the next year’s lessons, Noddings argues that our

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Get ready for more of the Greater Good!

schools should nurture critical thinking skills by asking students tough questions that require self-reflection.

Critical Lessons is more of an extended thought-exercise than a curriculum for teachers. Noddings clearly intends for her book to be a challenge for educators and the educated—and a way to ask them the same questions they’d ask to students. Indeed, education is only the starting point in Noddings’ ambitious book. Her chapters cover war, parenting, choosing a career, religion, animal rights, and more. Each section is stacked with questions designed to get students thinking and talking, and to increase their awareness of the connections between subjects that schools now treat as completely separate.

Most readers of education-policy books like this expect the author to tell them what to think. But Noddings rarely advo-cates for any controversial position; instead, she gives teachers suggestions on how to begin provocative conversations, and offers ideas to keep these conversations safe, civil, and engaging.

Teachers and students won’t be the only ones to benefit from Noddings’ ideas: Most public-school graduates will find Critical Lessons a provocative course in their post-secondary education.

—Matthew Wheeland

What Children NeedBY JANE WALDFOGELHarvard University Press, 2006, 269 pages

in What Children Need, Jane Wald-fogel, a professor of social work and public affairs at Columbia Univer-sity, outlines years worth of research into children’s needs at different ages, and reviews the evidence on

how children are faring. She makes pain-fully clear that many of these needs are not being met. For example, 75 percent of day care centers for infants and toddlers have been rated as being of “fair” or “poor” qual-ity. Similarly, many 6- to 12-year-olds do not have any access to high quality after-school programs.

Waldfogel notes that little research has been done on the effects of early paternal employment. But she does find short-lived behavioral problems in young children whose mothers work full-time, which indi-cates that many aren’t getting the sensitive, responsive care they need as infants. “The

research clearly suggests,” writes Waldfo-gel, “that at least some children would be better off if their parents could spend more time at home in the first year of life, either by delaying their return to work or by returning to work part-time.” Rather than blame mothers for going to work (as many commentators do), Waldfogel recommends policies that would enable parents of either sex to stay at home in the first year, should they want to—and that would improve the quality of non-parental childcare, should they not.

Waldfogel offers three principles for evaluating policies meant to improve children’s welfare: respecting parent’s own choices, promoting high standards for quality, and supporting parental employ-ment. In this way, she gives readers a solid sense of the gaps between what children need and what they are getting, as well as a blueprint for what public policy can and should do to provide for those needs. Waldfogel’s final chapter, “Where do we go from here?” is a compelling call to action for us as a society to invest more wisely in social programs that will benefit our children today—and the rest of us tomorrow.

—Christine Carter McLaughlin

Greater Good magazine is expanding! Starting in June of 2007, Greater Good will pub-lish four times a year instead of two.

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If that still isn’t enough Greater Good for you, we’d like to give you another option: become a subscriber for life! For $250, you’ll receive Greater Good forever. You can purchase a lifetime subscription simply by send-

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What is Social Intelligence?BY DANIEL GOLEMAN

three 12-year-olds are heading to a soccer field for gym class. Two athletic-looking boys are walking behind—and snickering at—the third, a somewhat chubby classmate.

“So you’re going to try to play soccer,” one of the two says sarcastically to the third, his voice dripping with contempt.

The chubby boy closes his eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath. Then he turns to the other two and replies, in a calm, matter-of-fact voice, “Yeah, I’m going to try—but I’m not very good at it.”

After a pause, he adds, “But I’m great at art—show me anything, and I can draw it real good….”

Then, pointing to his antagonist, he says, “Now you—you’re great at soccer—really fantastic! I’d like to be that good someday, but I’m just not. Maybe I can get a little better at it if I keep trying.”

At that, the first boy, his disdain now utterly disarmed, says in a friendly tone, “Well, you’re not really that bad. Maybe I can show you a few things about how to play.”

That short interaction offers a masterly display of “social intelligence.” By keeping cool, the aspiring artist resisted the pull to anger from the other’s sarcastic taunt and instead brought the other boy into his own more friendly emotional range.

“Social intelligence shows itself abun-dantly in the nursery, on the playground, in barracks and factories and salesrooms, but it eludes the formal standardized conditions of the testing laboratory.” So observed Edward Thorndike, the Columbia University psychologist who first proposed the concept, in a 1920 article in Harper’s Monthly Magazine. Thorndike noted that such interpersonal effectiveness was of vital importance for success in many fields, par-ticularly leadership. “The best mechanic in a factory,” he wrote, “may fail as a foreman for lack of social intelligence.”

Now, almost a century later, “social intelligence” has become ripe for rethink-ing as neuroscience begins to map the brain areas that regulate interpersonal dynamics. Psychologists argue about which human abilities are social and which are emotional. Small wonder: The two

domains intermingle, just as the brain’s social real estate overlaps with its emotion-al centers. In my book Emotional Intelligence, I folded social intelligence into my model of emotional intelligence without making much of that fact, as have other theorists in the field. But as I’ve come to see, simply lumping social intelligence within the emo-tional sort stunts fresh thinking about the human aptitude for relationship, ignoring what transpires as we interact. This myopia leaves the “social” part out of intelligence.

The ingredients of social intelligence as I see it can be organized into two broad categories: social awareness, what we sense about others—and social facility, what we then do with that awareness.

Social awareness refers to a spectrum that runs from primal empathy (instan-taneously sensing another’s inner state) to empathic accuracy (understanding her feelings and thoughts) to social cognition (“getting” complicated social situations).

But simply sensing how another feels, or knowing what they think or intend, does not guarantee fruitful interactions. Social facility builds on social awareness to allow smooth, effective interactions. The spectrum of social facility includes self-presentation, influence, concern, and synchrony (interacting smoothly at the nonverbal level).

Both the social awareness and social facility domains range from basic, “low-road” capacities, to more complex “high-road” articulations.

By “low-road,” I mean the neural cir-cuitry that operates beneath our aware-ness, automatically and effortlessly, with immense speed. When we are captivated

by an attractive face, we have the low road to thank.

The “high road,” in contrast, runs through neural systems that work more methodically and step by step, with deliber-ate effort. We are aware of the high road, and it gives us at least some control over our inner life, which the low road denies us. As we ponder ways to approach that attractive person, we take the high road.

Conventional ideas of social intelligence have too often focused on high-road talents like social knowledge, or the capacity for extracting the rules, protocols, and norms that guide appropriate behavior in a given social setting. Although this cognitive approach has served well in linguistics and in artificial intelligence, it meets its limits when applied to human relationships. It neglects essential noncognitive abili-ties like primal empathy and synchrony, and it ignores capacities like concern. A purely cognitive perspective slights the essential brain-to-brain social glue that builds the foundation for any interaction. The full spectrum of social intelligence abilities embraces both high- and low-road aptitudes that have been key to human survival.

Back in the 1920s, when Thorndike originally proposed measuring social intel-ligence, next to nothing was known about the neural basis of IQ, let alone about inter-personal skill. Now social neuroscience challenges intelligence theorists to find a definition for our interpersonal abilities that encompasses the talents of the low road—including capacities for getting in synch, for attuned listening, and for empathic con-cern. Without them the concept remains cold and dry, valuing a calculating intellect but ignoring the virtues of a warm heart.

Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., is the author of the bestsellers Emotional Intelligence (Bantam Books, 1996) and Social Intelligence (Ban-tam Books, 2006), from which this essay is adapted. He has been awarded the American Psychological Association’s Lifetime Achieve-ment Award and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. You can learn more about Goleman and his work at www.danielgoleman.info.

an idea for the greater good

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resources for the greater good

In this issueThe Center for Mind-Body Medi-

cine is a nonprofit educa-tional organization dedicated to reviving the spirit and transforming the practice of medicine. It is working to create a more effective, comprehensive, and compas-sionate model of healthcare and health education. www.cmbm.org, 202-966-7338

The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma is a global net-work of journalists, journal-ism educators, and health professionals committed to improving media coverage of trauma, conflict, and tragedy. It also addresses the conse-quences of such coverage for those working in journalism. www.dartcenter.org, 800-332-0565

Gardens of the Righteous Worldwide is an international organization dedicated to honouring those individuals who have tried to rescue the persecuted, and preserve their own dignity, during times of war and genocide. Svetlana Broz is the founder and director of its Sarajevo office, which runs public events and educational seminars, and has also planted a memorial garden to commemorate people who acted righteously during the Bosnian civil war. www.gariwo.net/eng_new (main office), www.gariwo.org (Sarajevo office)

The Institute for the Study of Health and Illness is an education and training center for physicians who wish to renew their commitment to service and to live by the values that have motivated physicians through the ages. It initiated the outreach support program, Finding

Meaning in Medicine, which has been replicated by inde-pendent groups of physicians nationwide. The groups meet once a month to discuss the meaning that lies beneath the daily routines of practic-ing medicine, and to find strength within a community of physicians who share their values. www.meaninginmedi-cine.org, 415-868-2642

Modest Needs is a nonprofit organization reaching out to hard-working individuals and families who suddenly find themselves faced with small, emergency expenses that they have no way to afford on their own. Its grants are funded exclusively by donations from private citizens who want to help individuals and families before they have been forced into the unforgiving cycle of poverty. www.modestneeds.org, 212-463-7042

The Peacemaker Institute sponsors an annual “street retreat” in Denver, Colo-rado, and runs other street retreats around the country. The retreats are four days and three nights, during which participants live on the streets without money, bedding, change of clothing, books, or watches. www.peacemakerinstitute.org, 303-544-5923

The Stanford Prison Experiment website features an extensive slide show and description of this classic psychology exper-iment, including parallels with the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. www.prisonexp.org

Women’s Educational Media pro-duces and distributes films and educational resources on a variety of social issues. Among these films is Let’s Get Real, which takes an hon-est and unflinching look at

bullying among middle school youth today, told entirely from their perspective. www.wome-dia.org, 415-641-4616

Research sources

The Center for the Scietific Study of Religion at the University of Texas, Austin, is a leading center for the sociology of religion, and particularly for the study of religious influ-ences on human behavior. Research strengths include the study of linkages between religion and emotional and physical health and well-being; family life; adolescent development; and politics and civic engagement. www.prc.utexas.edu/cssr, 512-471-5514

The Child Trauma Academy is a collaborative of individuals and organizations working to improve the lives of high-risk children through direct ser-vice, research, and education. It engages partners from aca-demia, the corporate world, private organizations, and public sector systems to help test, refine, and distribute innovations that can improve the lives of children. www.childtrauma.org, 281-932-1375

The Paxis Institute identifies, develops, tests, and distrib-utes best practices for help-ing individuals, organizations, and communities achieve greater peace and emotional well-being. www.paxis.org, 877-467-2947

In the FieldThe Milestones Project is an

online collection of pho-tographs of children from around the world, grouped into different theme-based galleries. The goal of the proj-

ect is to illustrate universal similarities, replacing fear of those different from us with a sense of our shared humanity. www.milestonesproject.com, 303-572-3333

The Mystery of Love Project is a national initiative devoted to generating community-based dialogues that expand upon popular notions of love. The centerpiece of the project is a new documentary called The Mystery of Love, which first aired on PBS in December of 2006 (check local listings). Major funding for The Mystery of Love is provided by the Fetzer Institute as part of its Campaign for Love and For-giveness: Change Everything. www.themysteryoflove.org

PeaceBuilders International is a program for communities and schools to promote posi-tive, healthy behaviors while reducing violence, injuries, bullying, and other negative behaviors. It was named a Best Practice of the Interna-tional Safe Schools Program of the World Health Organiza-tion. www.peacebuildersintl.com, 520-298-7670

The Public Conversations Project offers a variety of services—such as organizing conferences and facilitating dialogues—to help foster a more inclusive, empathic, and collaborative society. It brings together people and groups with differing values, worldviews, and positions to have constructive conversa-tions about divisive public issues. www.publicconversa-tions.org, 617-923-1216

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Greater Good is published by the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley (formerly the Center for the Development of Peace and Well-Being), which promotes the study of human happiness, compassion, and altruism. Funding for Greater Good comes from the Herb Alpert Founda-tion and Tom & Ruth Ann Hornaday. If you would like to make a donation, please contact Christine Carter McLaughlin at 510-642-2451 or [email protected].

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Documents

The Bystander’s Dilemma Why we ignore people in need...In the Bosnian civil war, Svetlana Broz found people who risked their lives to help victims—and inspired others to follow