On Their Best Behaviour

There are some people in this world who will risk everything, even their own lives, to help a stranger. And they’re not doing this for money or fame. So just why do they do it?

- Josh Sims

It was one of the most spectacular and talked-about acts of everyday heroism in recent years. In 2007, a man waiting for a subway train suffered a seizure and fell from the platform onto the tracks. Some 75 onlookers froze. One, however, acted. Wesley Autrey handed his two children to a stranger, jumped onto the tracks and attempted to drag the flailing man out of the way of an oncoming train. When it became clear that there wouldn’t be time for this, Autrey positioned the man at the centre of the tracks and lay down on top of him to prevent him from moving. The train passed over them both with less than an inch to spare. Autry later said: “I don’t feel like I did something spectacular. I did what I felt was right.”

Such events fascinate Professor Philip Zimbardo, author of The Lucifer Effect and the eminent psychologist behind the infamous Stanford prison experiment. Conducted 49 years ago, it involved splitting a group of volunteer students into ‘prisoners’ and ‘guards’ in a mock prison and letting nature take its course, which turned out to be an acquired submissiveness on the part of the prisoners and an acquired brutality on the part of the guards. The experiment had to be abandoned.