Heroes

Principled Innovation depends on educators and leaders who will go beyond simply seeing a problem to rise to action. Psychologists have long studied the bystander effect—how people are less likely to help someone in need if there is a large group of witnesses also not helping. Courageously breaking away from the crowd to intervene can then have a positive ripple effect that rouses others to action. In this TED Talk, Stanford professor emeritus and psychologist Phil Zimbardo (of the controversial Stanford Prison experiment) describes the role of ripple effects that “everyday heroes” have in taking courageous actions.