Verified by Inside the Mind of a Hero
“My purpose is to be here for others, to help them see their own importance.”
By Steve Taylor Ph.D. published September 5, 2023 - last reviewed on September 13, 2023
by Steve Taylor, Ph.D.
In 2017, my home city of Manchester, England, suffered a terrorist attack. A suicide bomber detonated a homemade bomb in the foyer of an arena after an Ariana Grande concert. Twenty-three people were killed, and over 1,000 were injured, most of them teenagers and children.
The attack was a tragic reminder of the brutality and destruction that emerge from the worst aspects of human nature. However, there was another side that illustrates its best aspects.
A report on the attack by Lord Bob Kerslake, commissioned by the mayor of Manchester, noted “hundreds if not thousands of acts of individual bravery and selflessness.” More specifically, the report described “the heroic actions of some members of the public involved in the widespread provision of first aid and reassurance to the casualties as well as assisting in the portage of those casualties.”
The public worked with law enforcement to carry away injured people on metal railings. Stewards formed a human wall to stop people from going toward the smoke. A man named Stephen Jones was sleeping on the street near the venue and rushed in to help. He found many children covered in blood, screaming, and crying. He and a friend pulled nails out of the children’s arms—and in one case, out of a child’s face—and helped a severely bleeding woman by holding her legs in the air. Jones recalled, “It was my instinct to help.”
A paramedic named Dan Smith, who was at the scene, commented: “There were an unbelievable number of people doing what they could to help. I saw people pulling together in a way I have never seen before. The thing I will remember more than any other is the humanity on display.”
The Danger of Death
Acts of heroic altruism are almost always a feature of crises and emergency situations. When a person’s life is endangered, it is common for witnesses or bystanders to act impulsively to try to save them, even if it involves risk to their own life. This applies to small-scale individual incidents–such as attempting to rescue someone from drowning or jumping down from a train platform to save a person who has fallen onto the track—and major disasters like earthquakes and airplane crashes. Such examples contradict the theory of the “bystander effect,” which suggests that people are reluctant to help in the presence of other bystanders. This theory has been largely discredited in recent years.
One might expect such acts of heroic altruism to become less frequent as personal risk increases, but this is not the case. In terrorist attacks, there are almost always reports of heroic altruism, despite the acute life-threatening danger.
The Paris terrorist attacks of November 2015 featured several incidences of altruistic heroism. At the Bataclan Hall—where 89 people were killed—a security guard named Didi risked his life to guide an estimated 400 to 500 people to safety, walking them back and forth through emergency exits to a nearby students’ residence hall. A pregnant woman he escorted to safety said in a radio report that she saw the worst in people, as well as the best in people, and that her life will never be long enough to thank him for what he did.
Tragically, a man named Ludovico Boumbas did lose his life. He was eating at La Belle Équipe bar in Paris when terrorists began shooting at the terrace. Rather than ducking for cover when he saw a gunman aiming at a woman nearby, he impulsively dived in front of her, sacrificing his life for hers.
Extreme Altruism, Explained
It is significant that the above acts of altruism were impulsive. They occurred on the spur of the moment, without any conscious deliberation. In a series of studies led by psychologist David Rand, a strong correlation has been established between impulsivity and altruism. The less time there is to deliberate, the more likely one is to behave altruistically. A 2020 paper also concluded that heroic altruism is intuitive rather than the result of reflection.
This suggests that altruism is innate to human beings. Altruism arises from interconnection. There is a sense in which human beings are not separate entities. We can enter one another’s mental space and share one another’s experiences. We can empathize with one another, and empathy gives rise to altruism. As the altruism-empathy hypothesis developed by Daniel Batson suggests, altruism may sometimes have selfish motives or bring some beneficial aftereffects. But pure altruism also arises from the human capacity for empathy.
Our ability to sense the suffering of others gives rise to an impulse to alleviate that suffering. In a 2019 study that appeared in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, the authors noted that one of the main characteristics of heroes is “an expansive sense of empathy, not simply with those who might be considered like them but also those who might be thought of as other.”
Terrorism and acts of random violence arise from disconnection, the ideological abstraction that divorces adherents from the reality and value of other human beings. In contrast, heroic altruism arises from a fundamental connection between us, which enables empathy and triggers an impulse to save the lives of others.
From Self-Absorption to Altruism
Those who engage in serial acts of altruism and kindness are often driven by an overarching goal that provides a sense of motivation, direction, and meaning. When we have purpose, life becomes less complicated and less stressful. We become mono-focused, like an arrow flying toward its target, and our mind feels somehow taut and strong, with less space for negativity to seep in. We also become more resilient and able to overcome obstacles that would normally defeat us. This is what the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche meant when he wrote, “If you have a Why to live, you can endure almost any How.”
Purpose and Transformation
There are several varieties of purpose that have different effects. For example, for many people, the main purpose of life is simply survival. Due to poverty or warfare, the purpose is to satisfy one’s basic physical needs and those of children.
Once our basic survival needs are satisfied, we may adopt other types of purpose. Some people might adopt a personal-accumulative purpose of trying to acquire possessions, achievements, success, or fame. Others may adopt an altruistic-idealistic purpose of helping others and contributing to the world. Still others—perhaps at the same time, since it’s possible to adopt more than one type of purpose—may adopt a self-expansive purpose of developing themselves through learning, creativity, or spirituality.
One finding from my research is that some people experience a shift in purpose following a traumatic or tumultuous life event. I have spent many years researching what I call “transformation through turmoil,” triggered by events such as a diagnosis of cancer, bereavement, intense stress, depression, or addiction. In these circumstances, some people undergo a sudden transformation, with a new sense of well-being, appreciation, and connection.
The shift has two main effects. First, people feel a much stronger sense of purpose. Second, they veer away from a personal accumulative purpose to an altruistic and/or self-expansive purpose.
I interviewed an ex-soldier who underwent a transformation due to the horrors of military combat. After repeated exposure to the realities of death, and suffering his own serious injuries, he became aware of a strong impulse to help others and became a counselor and psychotherapist. He says, “The purpose of my life is to be here for others, to help them grow and see their own importance.”
Finding the Connection
In these cases, there is a shift from an accumulative to an altruistic purpose, from a mode of accumulation to one of contribution. An encounter with death makes people aware of the preciousness and fragility of life. But rather than making them more concerned with their own desires and well-being, this awareness generates a powerful new altruistic sense of purpose. Transformation through turmoil is often described in terms of a spiritual awakening. And one of the elements that we wake up to is our connection with others. We transcend selfishness, realizing that we’re not isolated entities but part of a great shared network of being.
Steve Taylor, Ph.D., is a senior lecturer at Leeds Beckett University.
Signs of an Extraordinary Altruist
By Veronika Tait, Ph.D.
It takes more than everyday acts of kindness. These factors make a person truly heroic.
- They committed a generous act for someone unrelated to them and unknown to them at the time they decided to act.
- The behavior entailed a personal risk or cost to them.
- The act wasn’t something they were required or expected to do.
The following are some characteristics of extraordinary altruists:
They don’t believe humans can be truly evil. You may have assumed that extraordinary altruists show higher levels of empathy or religiosity compared with others, but little evidence has been found to support these differences. Research has found that altruists scored lower on the Belief in Pure Evil Scale compared to control subjects. This included items such as, “Some people are just pure evil” and “Evil people harm others for the joy of it.” This relationship held even after controlling for the participants’ levels of empathy and religiosity.
They’re good at detecting fear in others. Researchers have found that altruists have a larger and more active amygdala compared with control samples. The amygdala is an almond-shaped structure in the limbic system that aids in emotion-processing, especially in detecting fear and threat. It may be that the better we can recognize fear in others, the more equipped we are to act and alleviate their distress.
They don’t see themselves as special. Altruists don’t see themselves as anything but ordinary. While altruists score lower on beliefs in pure evil, they were no different from controls in believing that humans can be purely good. Many of us would classify someone—such as an anonymous kidney donor or a volunteer health worker in the middle of a crisis like Ebola—as one of the select few who qualifies as all good, yet such altruists see no distinction between themselves and others.
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