From: National Post
Courage & cowardice
National Post:
To psychologists, courage, like its opposite cowardice, is not an internal state of mind but an external process. It requires not only bravery, but also success, just as cowardice requires both fear and failure.
Both also demand a certain perfection in the results. For example, of the 74 people awarded the Carnegie Medal in 2008 for “saving or attempting to save” another’s life, a study found, only one left someone unrescued.
“It’s sort of like you have to do it or die trying,” said Cynthia Pury, editor of The Psychology of Courage: Modern Research on an Ancient Virtue.
Cowardice, on the other hand, is as easy as falling into a lifeboat, which is how Francesco Schettino, 52, described his inglorious exit from the Costa Concordia after it was wrecked off the shores of a small Ligurian island, which he was trying to salute.
Read the whole story: National Post
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