First paragraph: Our appetite for stories about heroes never lets up. While the remake of Ben-Hur does battle at the box office, 20th Century Fox is making an adventure film about Stan Lee, the man behind the Marvel superhero comics. Meanwhile, we recently commemorated human heroes in anniversaries for the September 11 attacks and the Battle of the Somme.&nbsp;  Access this article on The Conversation website: https://theconversation.com/heroes-help-us-cope-with-fears-of-dying-thats-why-we-love-them-6544

McCabe, Simon

English

Stirling Online Research Repository (RIOXX)

9/23/2016 Heroes help us cope with fears of dying – that's why we love themhttps://theconversation.com/heroes­help­us­cope­with­fears­of­dying­thats­why­we­love­them­65448 1/4AuthorSimon McCabeLecturer in Management Work andOrganisation, University of StirlingAcademic rigour, journalistic flairHeroes help us cope with fears of dying – that’s why welove themSeptember 19, 2016 2.48pm BSTOur appetite for stories about heroes never lets up. While the remake of Ben-Hur doesbattle at the box office, 20th Century Fox is making an adventure film about Stan Lee,the man behind the Marvel superhero comics. Meanwhile, we recently commemoratedhuman heroes in anniversaries for the September 11 attacks and the Battle of the Somme.But why do people identify with heroes? What drives heroism? I have co-authored two recent papers that suggest our affinity for heroes and heroism might be linked toconcerns about our mortality. Think of Batman battling the criminal underbelly ofGotham City a er the death of his parents, for example. It is one of many well knownstories that hint at how concerns about death can foster heroism.Our work draws on an idea from social psychology called terror management theory.This suggests that subconscious thoughts about our mortality can lead us to cling tobeliefs or values that give our lives meaning and a sense of permanence.The beliefs might be about immortality, in the form of religion and an a erlife. Or theymight be a proxy that stands above our individual existence, such as the nation state or aprevailing culture. How well we live up to these beliefs is thought to determine our self-‘They call me Existential Comfort Man’. Malchev9/23/2016 Heroes help us cope with fears of dying – that's why we love themhttps://theconversation.com/heroes­help­us­cope­with­fears­of­dying­thats­why­we­love­them­65448 2/4worth. And when something reminds us of our mortality, we identify more stronglywith these beliefs and try harder to live up to them.The researchWe were interested in how heroes fitted this picture. We had noted that heroes are o enparagons of cultural value. Since terror management theory says we adopt such valuesas an existential safety blanket, it would make sense that heroes should be a way ofkeeping death thoughts at bay. Being reminded of death should also make us valueheroes more and encourage us to behave like heroes ourselves.We ran studies to test these hypotheses. To test the proposition that we value heroesmore a er being reminded of our mortality, we divided 160 mixed-sex participants intotwo groups. One group was asked to write about their death. For comparison, the otherhad to write how they felt about uncertainty.We then divided everyone into two new groups and asked them to complete sets ofsentences. One group’s sentences needed a particular self-focused personal pronoun –for example “Please don’t do this to (me, my, I), it is just not fair”. The other group’soptions were pronouns about other people – "A er spreading fertiliser liberally over theflower bed, (he, she, they) watered the flowers”, for example.This exercise gets people either to focus on themselves or on others. Since previous research suggests that people’s heroes form part of their identity, we assume they aremore likely to identify with those heroes while focused on themselves.Lastly, all our participants had to think of a hero and their relationship with them. Theywere all asked to choose from one of seven Venn diagrams. Each had two circlescontaining the words “self” and “hero”, but with different degrees of overlap. We foundthat participants who had written about their death and then been focused onthemselves identified substantially more with their hero.9/23/2016 Heroes help us cope with fears of dying – that's why we love themhttps://theconversation.com/heroes­help­us­cope­with­fears­of­dying­thats­why­we­love­them­65448 3/4We then did a follow-up study to see whether thinking about a hero could mitigatepeople from thinking about their mortality. We divided 136 mixed-sex participants intotwo groups in which one wrote about their death and the other wrote about somethingelse – pain, in this case. Then we created three new groups. One had to write about apersonal hero, another about someone else’s hero, and the last group about anacquaintance.All participants were then given a series of word stems that could be completed witheither death-related words or other words, for example “coff–” could be “coffin” or“coffee” – a common way of testing the extent to which a person is thinking about theirmortality.Of the participants who had written about their death, the ones who had then had towrite about their personal hero were substantially less likely to use mortality words thanthe ones who wrote about either someone else’s hero or an acquaintance.For the last test, we turned to our proposition that death thoughts may make peoplebehave more heroically. We tested heroism by considering one of its classic traits –sacrifice. Given heroes o en make sacrifices by enduring pain, we used what’s called acold pressor task, where participants submerge their hands in painful freezing coldwater. This time all 160 participants were male (women have different responses to pain,so this would have influenced the findings).Again we divided participants into two groups, one wrote about their death and theother about failing an exam. Then two new groups were given (bogus) explanations for‘You betcha!’ SFerdon9/23/2016 Heroes help us cope with fears of dying – that's why we love themhttps://theconversation.com/heroes­help­us­cope­with­fears­of­dying­thats­why­we­love­them­65448 4/4Batmandoing the cold pressor task. One group was told the study wasassessing the relationship between pain and heroism becausethe more someone can endure pain, the more likely they areto be heroic. For the other group, “positive personality” wassubstituted for “heroism”.For the cold pressor, everyone reported every 15 seconds on aten-point scale the intensity and unpleasantness of the pain.Again the predictions were borne out: participants who werereminded about death and told that pain endurance was linkedto heroism reported substantially less pain.What it meansAll our findings supported what we had predicted. It suggestsfor the first time that being aware of your mortality can helpyou identify with heroes and/or behave heroically; and thatyour heroes help to defend against the existential concern ofdeath.So perhaps there is some hint of a psychological truth inBatman donning the suit a er his parents' death. Ourparticipants might not have been out fighting crime or swinging from the roo ops –getting ethical approval for that wouldn’t be easy. But we consistently found that thelinks between heroism and death were compelling. No wonder heroes play such aprominent part in our culture.‘Not so tough now huh?’ Chepko Danil Vitalevich

Heroes help us cope with fears of dying – that’s why we love them

Stirling Online Research Repository

9/23/2016 Heroes help us cope with fears of dying – that's why we love themhttps://theconversation.com/heroes­help­us­cope­with­fears­of­dying­thats­why­we­love­them­65448 1/4AuthorSimon McCabeLecturer in Management Work andOrganisation, University of StirlingAcademic rigour, journalistic flairHeroes help us cope with fears of dying – that’s why welove themSeptember 19, 2016 2.48pm BSTOur appetite for stories about heroes never lets up. While the remake of Ben-Hur doesbattle at the box oﬃce, 20th Century Fox is making an adventure ﬁlm about Stan Lee,the man behind the Marvel superhero comics. Meanwhile, we recently commemoratedhuman heroes in anniversaries for the September 11 attacks and the Battle of the Somme.But why do people identify with heroes? What drives heroism? I have co-authored two recent papers that suggest our aﬃnity for heroes and heroism might be linked toconcerns about our mortality. Think of Batman battling the criminal underbelly ofGotham City aǔer the death of his parents, for example. It is one of many well knownstories that hint at how concerns about death can foster heroism.Our work draws on an idea from social psychology called terror management theory.This suggests that subconscious thoughts about our mortality can lead us to cling tobeliefs or values that give our lives meaning and a sense of permanence.The beliefs might be about immortality, in the form of religion and an aǔerlife. Or theymight be a proxy that stands above our individual existence, such as the nation state or aprevailing culture. How well we live up to these beliefs is thought to determine our self-‘They call me Existential Comfort Man’. Malchev9/23/2016 Heroes help us cope with fears of dying – that's why we love themhttps://theconversation.com/heroes­help­us­cope­with­fears­of­dying­thats­why­we­love­them­65448 2/4worth. And when something reminds us of our mortality, we identify more stronglywith these beliefs and try harder to live up to them.The researchWe were interested in how heroes ﬁtted this picture. We had noted that heroes are oǔenparagons of cultural value. Since terror management theory says we adopt such valuesas an existential safety blanket, it would make sense that heroes should be a way ofkeeping death thoughts at bay. Being reminded of death should also make us valueheroes more and encourage us to behave like heroes ourselves.We ran studies to test these hypotheses. To test the proposition that we value heroesmore aǔer being reminded of our mortality, we divided 160 mixed-sex participants intotwo groups. One group was asked to write about their death. For comparison, the otherhad to write how they felt about uncertainty.We then divided everyone into two new groups and asked them to complete sets ofsentences. One group’s sentences needed a particular self-focused personal pronoun –for example “Please don’t do this to (me, my, I), it is just not fair”. The other group’soptions were pronouns about other people – "Aǔer spreading fertiliser liberally over theﬂower bed, (he, she, they) watered the ﬂowers”, for example.This exercise gets people either to focus on themselves or on others. Since previous research suggests that people’s heroes form part of their identity, we assume they aremore likely to identify with those heroes while focused on themselves.Lastly, all our participants had to think of a hero and their relationship with them. Theywere all asked to choose from one of seven Venn diagrams. Each had two circlescontaining the words “self” and “hero”, but with diﬀerent degrees of overlap. We foundthat participants who had written about their death and then been focused onthemselves identiﬁed substantially more with their hero.9/23/2016 Heroes help us cope with fears of dying – that's why we love themhttps://theconversation.com/heroes­help­us­cope­with­fears­of­dying­thats­why­we­love­them­65448 3/4We then did a follow-up study to see whether thinking about a hero could mitigatepeople from thinking about their mortality. We divided 136 mixed-sex participants intotwo groups in which one wrote about their death and the other wrote about somethingelse – pain, in this case. Then we created three new groups. One had to write about apersonal hero, another about someone else’s hero, and the last group about anacquaintance.All participants were then given a series of word stems that could be completed witheither death-related words or other words, for example “coﬀ–” could be “coﬃn” or“coﬀee” – a common way of testing the extent to which a person is thinking about theirmortality.Of the participants who had written about their death, the ones who had then had towrite about their personal hero were substantially less likely to use mortality words thanthe ones who wrote about either someone else’s hero or an acquaintance.For the last test, we turned to our proposition that death thoughts may make peoplebehave more heroically. We tested heroism by considering one of its classic traits –sacriﬁce. Given heroes oǔen make sacriﬁces by enduring pain, we used what’s called acold pressor task, where participants submerge their hands in painful freezing coldwater. This time all 160 participants were male (women have diﬀerent responses to pain,so this would have inﬂuenced the ﬁndings).Again we divided participants into two groups, one wrote about their death and theother about failing an exam. Then two new groups were given (bogus) explanations for‘You betcha!’ SFerdon9/23/2016 Heroes help us cope with fears of dying – that's why we love themhttps://theconversation.com/heroes­help­us­cope­with­fears­of­dying­thats­why­we­love­them­65448 4/4Batmandoing the cold pressor task. One group was told the study wasassessing the relationship between pain and heroism becausethe more someone can endure pain, the more likely they areto be heroic. For the other group, “positive personality” wassubstituted for “heroism”.For the cold pressor, everyone reported every 15 seconds on aten-point scale the intensity and unpleasantness of the pain.Again the predictions were borne out: participants who werereminded about death and told that pain endurance was linkedto heroism reported substantially less pain.What it meansAll our ﬁndings supported what we had predicted. It suggestsfor the ﬁrst time that being aware of your mortality can helpyou identify with heroes and/or behave heroically; and thatyour heroes help to defend against the existential concern ofdeath.So perhaps there is some hint of a psychological truth inBatman donning the suit aǔer his parents' death. Ourparticipants might not have been out ﬁghting crime or swinging from the rooǔops –getting ethical approval for that wouldn’t be easy. But we consistently found that thelinks between heroism and death were compelling. No wonder heroes play such aprominent part in our culture.‘Not so tough now huh?’ Chepko Danil Vitalevich

http://dspace.stir.ac.uk/bitstream/1893/24307/1/McCabe-Conversation-2016.pdf

Heroes help us cope with fears of dying – that’s why we love them

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Stirling Online Research Repository (RIOXX)

Stirling Online Research Repository

Stirling Online Research Repository (RIOXX)