From Compliance to Commitment: What Decades of Research Reveals About Moral Courage

The Question That Launched a Six-Year Study A twelve-year-old boy watched from a rooftop as soldiers spent 18 hours eliminating a thousand people. He was the only survivor from his entire family. When he finally escaped and stumbled barefoot across the countryside, a peasant woman opened her door, took one look at him, and without hesitation pulled him inside—despite knowing she’d face execution if discovered. Four decades later, that boy—now sociology professor Samuel Oliner—launched a six-year study interviewing 700 Europeans to answer the question that haunted him: Why did she risk everything when so many others didn’t?