"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 comparison 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 different people witnessing an emergency all assume someone else will help. Like the “good guards,” we fall into the trap of inaction when we assume it’s someone else’s responsibility to act the hero."
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Academics from the United StatesPsychologists from the United StatesPeople from New York CitySociologists from the United StatesStanford University faculty
Original Language: English
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"The Banality of Heroism" in The Greater Good (Fall/Winter 2006/2007), co-written with Zeno Franco
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Philip_Zimbardo
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Philip Zimbardo
Philip George Zimbardo (March 23, 1933 – October 14, 2024) was a psychologist and a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He was president of the Heroic Imagination Project, famous for his Stanford prison study involving Groupthink processes and for authorship of various introductory psychology books and textbooks for college students, including The Lucifer Effect and The Time Paradox.
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