Is courage an accolade or a process? A fundamental question for courage research.

Abstract

Courage has been described as a human virtue by philosophers across time and cultures (e.g., Dahlsgaard, Peterson, & Seligman, 2005;Miller, 2002). It figures prominently in positive psychology's science of virtue (e.g., Peterson & Seligman, 2004), and interest in courage as a topic of psychological study has grown with the field of positive psychology. However, what psychologists mean by the term courage has varied, and this variation has important consequences for understanding the construct. We therefore asked ourselves the following questions: Do we see courage as rare, lofty, and worthy of societal acknowledgment, which we view as part of courage as an accolade, or do we see courage as something that occurs many times in the typical person's life, a process, perhaps the process, by which people overcome subjectively felt risks for compelling reasons? Though desirable, most of the acts that fall under this second type of courage, which we call courage as a process, may pass unnoticed by observers and are not typically deserving of societal recognition.Courage can be defined in many ways. Norton and Weiss (2009) described courage as "persistence or perseverance despite having fear" (p. 214, emphasis in the original). Pury and Woodard (2009) defined it as "the intentional pursuit of a worthy goal despite the perception of personal threat and uncertain outcome" (p. 247). Peterson and Seligman (2004) defined courage as "emotional strengths that involve the exercise of will to accomplish goals in the face of opposition, external or internal" (p. 29). Finally, in the most comprehensive study of the definition of courage, Rate, Clarke, Lindsay, and Sternberg (2007) used a multimethod approach to develop a definition of courage as "(a) a willful, intentional act, (b) executed after mindful deliberation, (c) involving objective substantial risk to the actor, (d) primarily motivated to bring about a noble good or worthy end, (e) despite, perhaps, the emotion of fear" (p. 95).The first two definitions focus on courage as a process. In Pury and Woodard's (2009) work the definition is general. Pury and Woodard highlighted the importance of the worth of the goal and two unknowns-risk to the actor and completion of the task-without any particular behavioral or emotional response described. Norton and Weiss's (2009) definition is directed at the specific case of predicting performance during an exposure-like exercise for phobias. 67

White Allyship of Afro-Diasporic Women in the Workplace: A Transformative Strategy for Organizational Change

“…Training White would-be allies in ways that focus on reducing fragility and speaking up about injustice despite one’s fear of losing social or financial capital would help allies increase their competence and self-efficacy around allyship behaviors. Coaching would-be allies could entail simulations and role-play exercise, for example (Faunce, Bolsin, & Chan, 2004; Meyerson, 2008; Pury & Starkey, 2010; Simola, 2015). Importantly, would-be White allies themselves need support in their organizations to challenge the status quo and engender effective change.…”

Is courage always a virtue? Suicide, killing, and bad courage

“…The subjective nature of courageous actions means that the worth of the motivation and the goal is determined by the society in which the action takes place (Pury & Starkey, 2010). If the motivation or purpose behind a goal is something one's society would find undesirable, then any actions taken to achieve that end would also be seen as unacceptable.…”

“…Similarly, different judgments of the goodness or value of the goal may result in different assessments of courageousness. Someone who supports abortion rights may see an activist as less courageous if she is marching in a pro-life protest than in a pro-choice protest (Pury & Starkey, 2010).…”

“…Based on Rate's (Rate, 2010;Rate et al, 2007) three common features, we have proposed that two distinct viewpoints -actor and observer -lead to two types of courage -process courage and accolade courage (Pury & Starkey, 2010).…”

“…Accolade courage, on the other hand, involves the steps that an observer takes to determine the courageousness of an action (Pury & Starkey, 2010). The observer assesses whether the goal was something that can be seen as noble or worthwhile, whether the plan was one that could effectively lead to the attainment of the goal (see Pury & Hensel, 2010), and whether there was significant risk involved.…”