Introduction:
Humans have been attracted by tales of bravery, heroism, courage from time immemorial. It is something in out bent of mind which makes us admire the absurd, makes us stand up & take note of something which on the first look looks crazy, but on further analysis throws up a story of grit and determination. It is this human infatuation with the macho persona that made psychologists & behavioral scientists delve deeper into the behavioral attribute which mirrors this all: bravery.
Bravery can be simply defined as being brave or possessing & displaying courage. In heroic parlance, it's being able to face & deal with danger or fear without flinching or batting an eyelid. Also known as Courage, fortitude, will, and intrepidity it's been associated with various characters both in mythology & business parlance. But it's not just their domain; the common man in his life time comes across various such situations & more often than not displays varying degrees of bravery & grit. It is this common man that I am interested in. Bravery is not being fearless it rather is doing what needs to be done, despite the literal Damocles sword on your head.
It is not much for human fancy but for the very fact that bravery is an attribute very necessary for the smooth functioning of the human world today, has heightened its importance for psychologists. You take the case of a policeman standing up to criminals, naxals, or the common man in an office refusing bribes or the case of a woman braving chauvinistic males to rise up the corporate ladder, in all these cases we find how the world survives because of a few individuals who find inherent courage to brave odds and emerge successful. It suffices to say that bravery as a behavioral trait is highly alluring, and people tend to look in awe at those who visibly possess it, but what we should realize is bravery is something which is inherent & comes in differing forms & origins; hence its study has to encompass all such factors. Bravery in its various forms after all keeps us going, keeps this world inhabitable.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Bravery is a quality of spirit that enables you to face danger or pain without showing fear, but one often misconceived notion of people is that being brave means being fearless. Being brave doesn't me you don't fear the adversity; it means you have the strength of will to overcome whatever fear you have.
Bravery as a concept can apply to a fairly large number of instances, therefore a quick classification of bravery will help us look at its various aspects in greater detail:
Physical bravery: It entails acting or doing something in spite of possible harm that can occur to one's body. The heroic stories of the past or the instances where we act for our beliefs even in the face of physical danger is a typical example of this.
Moral bravery: it involves acting in a manner that will enhance or reinforce ones believes to be good and true. This basically is in face of social disapproval and other related forms of backlash. In today's world, it can symbolize standing up against the over jealous khaps or simply a common man trying to stand up for his basic rights.
Psychological bravery: It deals with acting against one's own natural urges & inclinations, facing our inner demons & overcoming them. This generally doesn't have any societal moral implication, but at a personal level it is increasingly becoming an indispensable asset in the present. Examples of this can be overcoming one's addictions like drugs, tobacco addictions etc.; getting over irrational anxieties & forms of parasitic relationships.
Bravery is a highly preferred behavioral trait; it is something which keeps the world going. It is something that we seek in all the people around us, it is the difference between an entrepreneur & a wannabe entrepreneur, and it is the key to achieve success in any form of activity in life. One should be brave enough to take a risk, rather than cowering about the unforeseen. We can correlate the success of an idea to the amount of courage put in by its proponents, ceteris paribus. Individuals, who succeed in a hitherto unknown sector, generally show a higher degree of courage, grit, & self-belief. A similar link can be established for organizations which venture into risky sectors & hold their own; these moves exemplify both their risk taking appetite & their inherent self-belief, which is the part of the broad definition of bravery.
We arrive at a definition of bravery, which I believe is more practical: " Bravery is a behavioral trait which allows us to overcome our inhibitions, our inner fears & gives us the strength to do what we feel is right, irrespective of any form of backlash. It is something which imbibes in us a sense of self-belief which can make us scale mountains & do things which we believed we never could."
Bravery works well as a virtue in the VIA classification system because it is highly regarded across cultures and has obvious benefits for those surrounded by brave people. Possible problems with viewing bravery as a classifiable human strength is that it could be argued that bravery is not trait-like since it only comes out under certain circumstances.[9] The counterargument to this claim is that bravery is trait-like in the same way creativity is considered a trait; both appear only in certain situations.[9] The VIA claims that it is a positive psychological trait that can be found and cultivated in certain individuals.
Review of Literature:
The story is of two ten-year-old girls and the hardships they face while their country is occupied by German Nazis. In a much broader sense, it is a story of the entire Danish nation and its people.[1]
Vikram Pandit is a true visionary, brave man who took over as the head of citi group during the credit crunch period. With steely resolve, Pandit wrote down billions of dollars, closed scores of branches, jettisoned parts of the business, slashed jobs and cut dividends. He didn't stop there. Next, he tapped sovereign wealth funds in Asia and the Gulf for nearly $30 billion, set up a new risk-management team, and cut the bank's exposure to the sub-prime market.[2]
"Matterhorn," is about a company of Marines who build, abandon and retake an outpost on a remote hilltop in Vietnam. The story is told from the point of view of a young second lieutenant, Mellas, who joined the Marines for confused and vaguely patriotic reasons that are quickly left in tatters by military incompetence.[3]
One of the "ten most famous battles " of the world. A handful of Sikh soldiers- 21 to be exact - of the 4th Battalion of the Sikh Regiment (then XXXVI Sikh) formed part of the British Indian Army and fought thousands of Pathans in the North Western Frontier Province (now Pakistan). All 21 Sikh soldiers died in the battle as they fought to the last man and last bullet; but they did not yield even an inch of ground that they were defending. On learning of this glorious, gallant and unparalleled action, members of both houses of the British Parliament rose in unison to pay homage to the great Indian soldiers. Each one of the 21 soldiers was posthumously awarded the Indian Order of Merit, the highest British gallantry award then given to Indian (equivalent to the Victoria Cross awarded to the British).[4]
Courage (shauriya) and Patience (dhairya) appear as the first two of ten characteristics (lakshana) of dharma in the Hindu Manusmruti, besides forgiveness (kshama), tolerance (dama), honesty (asthaya), physical restraint (indriya nigraha), cleanliness (shouchya), perceptiveness (dhi), knowledge (vidhya), truthfulness (satya), and control of anger (akrodh). Islamic beliefs also present courage as a key factor in facing the Devil and in some cases Jihad to a lesser extent; many believe this because of the courage the Prophets of the past displayed against people who despised them for their beliefs.
"Courage is the self-affirmation of being in spite of the fact of non-being. It is the act of the individual self in taking the anxiety of non-being upon itself by affirming itself ... in the anxiety of guilt and condemnation. ... every courage to be has openly or covertly a religious root. For religion is the state of being grasped by the power of being itself."[5]
Number the stars by Losis Lowry
http://blogs.hbr.org/corkindale/2008/07/will_vikram_pandits_bold_move.html
The Vietnam Wars: 'Matterhorn'
http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/history-of-sikhism/1189-warrior-saints-sikhs-true-story-bravery.html
Empirical Study and Generalization:
I have followed the interview approach to study the behavioral traits of a few of my friends. I picked the people to interview on the basis of a few past events, in which they exhibited bravery in one form or another. Each interviewee had a different tale to tell, we will analyze their cases as we progress. The basic questions which I put to them involved a gamut of objective & short answer questions. Their responses were dully noted.
The following is the list of questions that I put to my interviewees, some of the questions differed in language when put to different interviewees. Due to paucity of space I won't delve into the details of their cases.
Did you experience any form of an internal drive to act?
Was it because of the closeness with the person or was it a general sense of wrongdoing that drove you?
Were you certain of success before you acted upon your belief?
Would you describe yourself as fearless? If no then how come you overcame the fear of failing?
Did you factor in the possibility of a backlash or any negative impact on your future?
If you knew that the party was wrong in picking up the fight would you have still saved them or would you have taken the moral high ground & stepped back?
Do you believe in taking risks?
Do you think your above trait has had an influence on your life, (success or the lack of it etc.)?
When going on a leisure trip you find a person seriously wounded & people around him/her having a verbal duel, would you
rush him/her to the hospital
try to solve the verbal duel 1st
mind you own business
Respondent no. 1
Case Prologue:
My friend Mr. X had been to a restaurant in Gurgaon along with his friends. There they saw a couple was being denied entry into the restaurant for no good reason and the manager was even misbehaving with them. All of a sudden the manager summoned the bouncers who manhandled the couple and were going to bash them up. My friend X, along with his pals interfered, they were outnumbered, but eventually they managed to save the couple. In the process though, X got a few blows & was injured.
Interview Findings:
I will jot down the pertinent findings from the interview with Mr. X
I found that X intervened to save that guy because he believed that it was a case of injustice & that someone should rise up to the occasion, since such an incident can happen to nearly anyone.
X didn't know if he would succeed in saving the couple, but he knew if he tried it would make a difference.
X realized that in process of rescuing the couple he & his friends might get physically injured or face legal hurdles.
I found that X didn't think of himself as someone who was born fearless, X believed that his sense of right & wrong egged him on.
X was basically a risk taking person, & he felt that his risk taking nature had helped him overcome his inner demons.
Respondent no. 2
Case Prologue:
This person, Mr. Y, was a student of engineering, in a NIT. In his final year, a friend of his (Mr. A) was accused of cyber-crime & data theft, he was heavily penalized by the institute Disciplinary Committee. Mr. Y along with his other friends decided to protest this. They managed to get their entire batch together & sat on a silent protest. The sheer magnitude of the protest made the Director of the institute take note. After speaking with Mr. Y & his friends, he convened a meeting of the Disciplinary Committee, and after a long-stretched process of reinvestigation Mr. A was found guilty of a minor offence, the penalties were reduced proportionately.
Interview Findings:
The following are my findings from my interview with Mr. Y which are pertinent to us:
I found that Y acted not just because he could empathize with his friend, but because he believed that the ruling was flawed, having not considered the evidences properly.
Y didn't know if he could make any difference to his friends' condition, but he wanted to make the college administration aware of the real case. He believed in a just trial.
Mr. Y knew pretty well that by making a stand, he and his friends risked being singled out & the college administration could victimize them through unfair gradation etc. but they went on with their plan.
Mr. Y defended his friend since he knew that the case against him was amplified in nature, the punishments & the charges were disproportionate. Had Mr. A actually been guilty of all the charges, Y would never have taken up his case.
Mr. Y believed that it they had been pushed to the limit by the administration. He felt that it wasn't their inherent fearlessness but the fact that pushed against the wall he & his friends didn't have a choice but to act.
I found that Mr. Y wasn't always a risk taking person, in fact he even narrated how not taking a risk had affected his career, but in this situation he made an exemption.
Respondent no. 3:
Case Prologue:
My friend Mr. Z was out with his girlfriend, they came across a case of eve-teasing, wherein a bunch of miscreants were misbehaving with two girls. The general public was aloof to their plight. But Z intervened & tried rescuing the girls, in the ensuing tiff Z got injured, but seeing his courage the people around the scene also intervened & they chased away the miscreants.
Interviewing Z was quite an eye-opener, since he had risked not just his own safety but also the safety of his girlfriend to rescue to unknown girls. The findings are as follows:
I found that Z acted since he was both disgusted with the behavior of the bunch of guys, and the public which was turning a blind eye to the plight of the helpless girls.
Z knew that public follows a herd mentality, he knew that if he took a stand the people around will follow sooner or later, luckily for him they joined in soon.
Z wasn't sure if he could take on the miscreants single handedly but he nevertheless wanted to give it a try.
Mr. Z knew that getting engulfed in this issue might risk not just his safety but that of his girlfriend also.
Mr. Z believed that he was quite a fearless person, & but he didn't believe in taking random risks, rather he was more of a pragmatist.
