When Barrie, Ont. resident Rob Newman came across a fiery highway crash on his way to a family campsite last summer, adrenaline kicked in and he immediately rushed in to help. Newman and two other passers-by were able to rescue a woman and her husband, even as flames engulfed the vehicle.
Afterwards, Newman insisted he hadn't done anything special; he had simply been acting on instinct.
“I don't consider myself a hero, I just consider myself a Good Samaritan,” he told CTV Barrie at the time. “…I'm just glad they're alive.”
The "I'm not a hero" sentiment is one that many "accidental heroes" express after rescuing strangers. Many say they didn't really think too much ahead of time, they just moved in to help. Now, a new study confirms that acts of heroism are often performed without a whole lot of forethought.
Researchers led by David Rand from Yale University reviewed statements given by more than 50 "civilian heroes" who had earned Carnegie Hero Medals after moving in to save strangers from near drownings, car crashes and other accidents.
The team wanted to know if people who act with "extreme altruism" do so intuitively, or if they think it through before making a conscious decision to ignore their fears.
The team recruited hundreds of participants to rate statements made by 51 recipients of the Carnegie Hero Medal. The researchers also used a computer text analysis algorithm to analyze the heroes' statements.
Their analyses showed that, overwhelmingly, "extreme altruists" reported acting first and thinking later.
When the heroes explained why they decided to help, "the cognitive processes they describe are overwhelming(ly) intuitive, automatic and fast," the study authors report. Most of the heroes said they acted intuitively -- even in situations where they would have had enough time to deliberate about what they were about to do.
The researchers say their findings suggest that "high-stakes extreme altruism" is largely motivated by automatic processes. While many might assume that means heroes are acting on "instinct," Rand cautions the responses are not necessarily genetically hard-coded. Instead, he believes people’s intuitive habits of cooperation stem from experiences that teach helping others is also in their own long-term interest.
The researchers note that their findings rely on the statements given by the medal recipients, who might have been experiencing some form of bias as they recounted their actions. There also might have been a disconnect between how the heroes described their thought processes after the fact and what their actual thought processes were at the time.
As well, it's possible the study participants who analyzed the statements may not have fully understood the subtle differences between intuitive and deliberate behaviors.
The full study appears in the open access journal PLOS ONE.
