Portland Tribune
July 31st, 2014
Vivian McCann is convinced that nurses can be taught to stand up to authority figures who are cutting safety corners. She is certain that most of us can learn how to take heroic actions in everyday situations even while those around us do nothing.
McCann, a Portland Community College psychology professor, is a local trainer for the Heroic Imagination Project, an international effort whose purpose, according to its founder, is “seeding the earth with heroes.”
The origin of the Heroic Imagination Project is almost as fascinating as the work it does around the world. Phil Zimbardo was a Stanford University psychology professor in 1971 when he conducted what became known as the Stanford Prison Experiment. He divided his students into two groups. Half were instructed to play the roles of prison guards, the other half were to act as prisoners.
Six days in, Zimbardo thought his experiment was going wonderfully, according to McCann, who later co-authored a college psychology textbook with Zimbardo. He was crowing to one of his grad students about the wonderful research. Everybody seemed to have forgotten they were college students. The students playing guards had begun sadistically abusing the student prisoners, who had started acting defensive, depressed and helpless.