ABSTRACT
Heroism may be a topic having broad boundaries, ones pertinent to the diverse accomplishments of humankind (Carlyle, 1993). Although the concept of heroism has been discussed in great detail in such fields as history, political science, religion, and psychology (Carlyle, 1993; Cole, 2005; Jayawickreme & Di Stefano, 2012), little theory-and even less empirical research-has focused on the formation of heroism from the perspective of human development. Nevertheless, researchers can look to a burgeoning literature on the development of character and prosocial behaviors to understand how heroism and heroic leadership may emerge across the life course. Accordingly, as a means to promote developmental research on leadership and heroism, this
chapter focuses on the role of character development in the formation of these constructs. We introduce a relational developmental systems-based model that conceptualizes character in regard to mutually influential and, as well, mutually beneficial individual-context relations (Lerner & Callina 2014; Overton, 2015). We present a life-span approach to the study of the development of character, with the aim of offering a model that may account for the emergence of leadership and heroism in the diverse settings involved in human endeavors.
