Introduction : Creating caring societies: values, culture, institutions. Why we should help and not harm others -- Inclusive caring, moral courage, basic human needs, altruism born of suffering: socialization and experience -- Basic psychological needs, caring and violence, and optimal human functioning -- Learning by doing and natural socialization: the evolution of helping and caring (and violence) through one's own actions -- Passivity: bystanders to genocide -- The psychology of rescue: perpetrators, bystanders, and heroic helpers -- Psychology, morality, devaluation, and evil -- Helping psychologically wounded children heal -- Altruism born of suffering: the roots of caring and helping after victimization and other trauma / Nancy R. Goodman and Marilyn B. Meyers -- The heroism of survivors: survivors saving themselves and the impact on their lives -- Heroes and other committed individuals -- How can we become good bystanders - in response to needs around us and in the world? -- Understanding police violence and active bystandership in preventing it -- Many students are happy, others are bullied, some excluded: active bystandership helps -- Training active bystanders in schools (and other settings) -- Education and trainings as routes to helping, nonaggression, compassion, and heroism -- Advancing healing and reconciliation - in Rwanda and beyond / Ervin Staub and Laurie Anne Pearlman -- Public education for reconciliation and peace: changing hearts and minds: Musekeweya, an educational radio drama in Rwanda -- Preventing violence and terrorism and promoting positive relations between Dutch and Muslim communities in Amsterdam -- The impact of the Staub model on policymaking in Amsterdam regarding polarization and radicalization / Jeroen de Lange -- The roots of helping, heroism, and resistance to and the prevention of mass violence: active bystandership in extreme times and in building peaceful societies -- Exploring moral courage and heroism -- Nonviolence as a way to address injustice and group conflict -- An unassuming hero -- Bystandership: one can make a difference: interview with Ervin Staub / Nancy R. Goodman and Marilyn B. Meyers -- Summary table of the roots of caring, helping, active bystandership, resistance to violence, and creating caring societies -- Creating caring societies: values, culture, institutions.
Summary:
The book offers an excellent balance of Staub's important and influential recent articles and other essays in the field and newly written chapters. It explores why we should help and not harm others. It offers wide-ranging examples and research about the roots of everyday helping and heroism, rescue in the Holocaust and elsewhere, overcoming trauma to become altruists, reconciliation in Rwanda and other ways of resisting evil, and more. Staub engages with ways to promote active bystandership in the service of preventing violence, helping people to heal from violence, and building caring societies. He explores the range of experiences that lead to active bystandership, including socialization by parents, teachers (and peers) in childhood, education, experiential learning, and public education through media. He examines what personal characteristics or dispositions result from such experiences, which in turn lead to caring and helping. Staub also considers how circumstances influence people--both individuals and whole groups--and how they join with personal dispositions to determine whether people remain passive in the face of others' need or instead help others and behave in morally courageous or even heroic ways. He considers how moral and caring values can be subverted by circumstances, and outlines ways to resist that possibility. He also considers how past victimization and the resulting psychological woundedness, which can lead to "defensive violence" or hostility toward people and the world, may be transformed by other experiences, leading to "altruism born of suffering." The book draws on research and theory as well as work in applied settings.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.