\n The videos of people bravely springing into action<\/a> at Bondi Beach have been watched by millions and might give the impression that such heroic behavior is common, said Dr. Ari Kohen, a political scientist at University of Nebraska-Lincoln<\/a> and author of \u201cUntangling Heroism.\u201d<\/a>\n <\/p>\n \n That impression is wrong. Typically, when others are in peril, people nearby remain bystanders, Kohen said.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cMost people don\u2019t do this. It\u2019s risky. It\u2019s dangerous,\u201d Kohen said.\n <\/p>\n \n But bystanders who become heroes \u2013 the people who run toward danger \u2013 may share some common traits or find themselves in circumstances that push them to spring into action. And there\u2019s even the possibility that people can be trained to do it.\n <\/p>\n \n Few survivors or families of people killed at Bondi Beach have laid out exactly what made them step in, but those who\u2019ve spoken out repeated phrases already familiar from people who put themselves in harm\u2019s way.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt\u2019s the same sort of responses we get from heroes around the world. \u2018I just did what I was supposed to do or what anyone would do,\u2019 which we know isn\u2019t true, but that is the refrain of almost every heroic actor,\u201d said Matt Langdon, executive director of the Heroic Imagination Project<\/a>, which says it \u201cflips the script on passivity\u201d through research and training on heroism. \u201cThey were compelled to do it. There wasn\u2019t really an option.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The story lodged in the memories of why people don\u2019t step up to help others in distress is an infamous 1964 murder case. After 28-year-old Kitty Genovese<\/a> was stabbed to death outside her apartment in New York, it was believed that there were dozens of people who could have helped \u2014 but didn\u2019t. The reported apathy of witnesses launched the story to new levels of attention and sparked changes that led to the 911 system and neighborhood watch programs.\n <\/p>\n \n The case was also the impetus for what\u2019s known as the bystander effect:<\/a> Social psychologists believed that when there are more people around, everyone felt less personal responsibility to take action because they assumed someone else will act.\n <\/p>\n \n But many of the details that drew attention to Genovese\u2019s story have been debunked.<\/a> Research showed that Genovese was stabbed twice. After the first stabbing, someone yelled out the window, scaring the assailant away, and neighbors called police. The incident also happened in the middle of the night, and some witnesses said they were uncertain about what they saw and did not necessarily understand that Genovese was in danger.\n <\/p>\n \n The bystander effect itself has not been completely debunked, but experts think it\u2019s more nuanced: Large groups may be a little slower to react, but some people can and do step up in a real emergency, even if it goes against their natural instincts.\n <\/p>\n \n Heroes are rare in part because it takes a perfect storm in the brain to act, according to Dr. Steven Quartz,<\/a> a professor of philosophy at Caltech who uses neuroscience to better understand the brain\u2019s value systems.\n <\/p>\n \n Ultimately, humans have an overwhelming desire for self-preservation. Quartz said people generally have a default freeze or flight response to \u201clethal chaos,\u201d particularly when the situation feels uncontrollable.\n <\/p>\n \n If someone is going to try to save a drowning child or a person who fell onto the subway tracks, a few key elements are needed for the brain to overcome its typical reaction to danger, Quartz explained:\n <\/p>\n Awareness that something has happened and be empathetic to who\u2019s experiencing it \u2013 \u201cintense other-focused salience (empathy plus identification)\u201d<\/p>\n A sense that what they could do would help \u2014 what he calls \u201ca momentary senes that action could succeed\u201d<\/p>\n And a \u201cfast commitment\u201d to shift the brain \u201cfrom default avoidance \u2013 freeze or flight \u2013 into action\u201d<\/p>\n \n Once they have that combination, they can quickly move from self-preservation to action.\n <\/p>\n \n Quartz says people don\u2019t have to be in a \u201cheroic\u201d occupation to respond to these complex contextual clues. What it takes, in large part, is empathy.\n <\/p>\n \n He estimates that about 10% of the population has a natural trait that generates a high kind of empathetic response that can prompt brave action, but he doesn\u2019t believe that such a trait is necessary for someone to become a hero.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWhile we know there\u2019s all the difference in terms of how much empathy people in general feel as kind of a default, we also know that can be modulated by how much we identify with someone else,\u201d Quartz said.\n <\/p>\n \n Typically, people who have more empathy will act to protect those who are close to them, like a friend, a family member or even someone they identify with. That could be something as simple as a fan of the same football team, Quartz said.\n <\/p>\n \n On the surface, it may seem like those at Bondi Beach had little in common. \u201cThe number of Australian accents on the news was really low,\u201d said Langdon, who is based in Australia.\n <\/p>\n \n The Gurmans were immigrants from Ukraine. Al Ahmed was a Muslim whose family was from Syria. Morrison was an Orthodox Jew who fled the Soviet Union. But Bondi Beach is well known as a safe place for diverse communities to come together.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThat probably played into the incident, as well. People were drawn from around the world, and they were having a good time together,\u201d Langdon said.\n <\/p>\n \n Kohen cites other historic examples of people who risk their lives and have empathy for people with different backgrounds. For example, although most people did not protect Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust, an entire French village \u2013 Le Chambon-Sur-Lignon<\/a> \u2013 worked together to save thousands of Jewish refugees. Residents hid people in their homes, provided forged identification papers and guided refugees to neutral Switzerland.\n <\/p>\n \n The village was predominantly Christian, Kohen said, but they were empathetic in part because they were Huguenots \u2014 a group that had been persecuted by Catholic authorities in France for centuries.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThey had a particular experience with religious persecution, so when these first Jewish refugees showed up and knocked on the door of the church, there was an immediate personal identification,\u201d he said. \u201cThe people in that village had a much more expansive sense of empathy because they had a personal identification with people who were suffering in a particular way.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Some of the Bondi bystanders who took on the shooters also said they were angry at what they saw happening, Langdon said. Studies of heroes in other disasters have said the same.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWhen we see something that violently disagrees with our worldview, we are compelled to act,\u201d Langdon said. \u201cI think seeing a long gun like that on the beach in Bondi is so outside of what\u2019s OK in this country that they just acted straightaway.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Kohen says the attention paid to heroes on social media may be disproportionate to their actual number, but seeing these stories may create more heroes.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt\u2019s starting to get into the public consciousness that rescue is, while dangerous, something that ordinary people can do,\u201d Kohen said.\n <\/p>\n \n Research shows that having role models or examples of heroic behavior can be a building block for people to take their own heroic action. Knowing that others step up can prompt people to think about what they would do in the same situation. Even watching movies or reading books about everyday heroes, or fictional heroes like characters in \u201cStar Wars,\u201d may have an impact.\n <\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ap202658534796.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Villagers](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/gettyimages-56211031.jpg\")
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