\n<\/p>\n
I<\/span>t was early morning on 1 January last year when Colin McGarva dived into a flooding river in Worcester to rescue an unconscious woman. McGarva said he didn\u2019t think twice about the risk to himself, or the devastating loss his newborn son would suffer had he too been swept away by the fast-flowing icy waters.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t stop to think because the instinct \u2013 the instant reaction \u2013 is to help someone in need,\u201d he said. \u201cSomeone\u2019s life is an important thing. Helping is just something you have to do.\u201d<\/p>\n The concept of heroism was widely discussed last week after the mass stabbing attack on a high-speed train from Doncaster to London. While initial reports told of panic and confusion as passengers \u2013 some wounded and bloodied \u2013 ran through the carriages, stories of heroism soon emerged.<\/p>\n Samir Zitouni, an LNER employee, was the most high-profile. Taken to hospital after putting himself in the line of danger to save passengers\u2019 lives, he was hailed by police and the transport secretary for \u201cbravery beyond measure\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are people who are alive today who wouldn\u2019t be \u2026 were it not for his actions,\u201d announced the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander. But, said his family, \u201cto us, he\u2019s always been a hero\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/span>Samir Zitouni was widely praised for his heroic actions last week.<\/span> Photograph: LNER\/PA<\/p>\n Is there a hero inside all of us? Experts in bystander intervention say there is; that we are all more likely than not to act with selfless heroism in moments of acute threat.<\/p>\n \u201cThe notion that people panic and run screaming for the exits is a Hollywood fiction,\u201d said Prof Stephen Reicher, an expert in group behaviour at the University of St Andrews.<\/p>\n \u201cCharacteristically, people stay and help each other,\u201d he said. \u201cWe found this during the 7\/7 attacks on the underground and the 1999 attack on the Admiral Duncan pub in London, where people looked after each other even though they feared other bombs.<\/p>\n \u201cIn our own research on the Leytonstone tube attack in 2015, there was an amazing level of spontaneous coordination by bystanders: some directed others away from danger. Some distracted the attacker. Some confronted the attacker. Each was able to act because of the others. Heroism was a feature of the group, not just the individual,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Prof Clifford Stott, a specialist in the psychology of crowds and group identity at Keele University, agreed. Modern research, he said, showed \u201cbystander apathy\u201d was a myth. Instead, strangers often work together in emergency situations with highly sophisticated unity.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat modern research shows is that the public are very good at protecting themselves and that the heroic actions that hit the headlines are actually underlying, natural tendencies in all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n That, he said, revealed something very positive about the human condition \u2013 but it also indicated that society would benefit from fostering and harnessing this natural capability by helping people to feel empowered to take control during emergencies.<\/p>\n \u201cThis will become increasingly important because of the broader challenges society will soon face \u2013 at the very least, there are going to be many more climate-related mass emergencies,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need to scaffold local resilience and build infrastructures within local communities that help them to organise and help manage that motivation that people have to step in.\u201d<\/p>\n Prof John Drury, a social psychologist specialising in the study of collective behaviour at the University of Sussex, agreed. \u201cAuthorities arriving at emergency scenes need to support and facilitate people\u2019s strong, natural tendency to group together and help each other,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The language used by police and other first responders was subtle but key to this, he said, pointing to the use of positive, unifying language: \u201cTalk about \u2018the community\u2019 rather than \u2018the public\u2019, and about \u2018us\u2019 and \u2018we\u2019,\u201d he said. \u201cFocus on shoring up that sense of connection within the group you\u2019re talking to, and between yourself and that group.\u201d<\/p>\n Dr Gill Harrop, who leads the Bystander Intervention Programme at the University of Worcester, said many institutions were already actively working towards building a culture of helpers.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re seeing this happening now with bystander intervention training in schools, colleges, universities, policing and even the NHS,\u201d she said. \u201cWe are slowly but surely creating communities of active bystanders. And that\u2019s wonderful.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was early morning on 1 January last year when Colin McGarva dived into a flooding river in Worcester to rescue an unconscious woman. McGarva said he didn\u2019t think twice about the risk to himself, or the devastating loss his newborn son would suffer had he too been swept away by the fast-flowing icy waters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32710,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[5586,18842,18841,10932,1379,2150,4669,18840],"class_list":{"0":"post-32709","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-actions","9":"tag-apathy","10":"tag-bystander","11":"tag-heroic","12":"tag-myth","13":"tag-natural","14":"tag-society","15":"tag-tendency"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}