Heroic behavior: A review of the literature on high-stakes altruism in the wild

This review compiles and contextualizes the available empirical literature on natural occurrences of high-stakes altruism among nonrelatives, i.e., behaviors often called 'heroic'. Four domains are covered: exceptional bravery and self-sacrifice in war, heroism in civilian life, undirected organ donations, and rescues of persecuted persons during mass violence and genocides. The diversity of strategies used to identify instances of heroic behavior and the multiplicity of data collection methods employed in this relatively sparse literature currently preclude a systematic comparison of results. Therefore, the aim of this overview is to provide an exhaustive point of entry to a fascinating field of research with much untapped potential for testing theories about prosocial behavior.

Rare and Costly Prosocial Behaviors Are Perceived as Heroic

Heroism has only recently become a topic of empirical investigation. Existing research suggests a connection between heroism and four well-documented dimensions of human social behavior: (1) the cost incurred by the actor; (2) the benefit provided to the recipient; (3) the perceived frequency (i.e., descriptive normativity); and (4) the perceived expectation to perform it (i.e., injunctive normativity). In a series of exploratory studies (total N = 408), we aim to shed light on how each of these constructs influence lay intuitions about the nature of heroism (i.e., what determines which acts people perceive to be heroic). In Study 1, subjects generated a list of acts they deemed to be heroic. In Study 2, subjects rated the heroicness of the acts from Study 1, revealing considerable variation in the level of heroism. Finally, subjects in Study 3 rated the cost to the actor, the benefit to the recipient(s), the descriptive normativity (i.e., frequency), and the injunctive normativity (i.e., obligatoriness) of ten acts, five of which received particularly high heroism scores in Study 2 ("exemplary" acts of heroism) and five of which received particularly low heroism scores in Study 2 ("ambiguous" acts of heroism). We find that more heroic acts are seen as rarer and more costly to actors-but, interestingly, not more beneficial to recipients or less obligatory. These findings help to illuminate what it means to be seen as a hero, and suggest clear future directions for both empirical and theoretical work.